if obama gets the blame when gas is high, and he did, then he gets full credit when it's low again.
you can't have it both ways.
funny, we have had 59 straight months of job creation, an all time record, with 11.4 million new jobs, and the last three months have seen job gains not seen since 1999 in the days of clinton.
we are creating so many jobs right now that despite the record job creation numbers, unemployment is ticking up because more people are now looking for work again.
get your fucking facts straight.
first of all, learn to spell.
secondly, they do not measure unemployment with a census, they measure it with a monthly scientific poll.
third, that monthly scientific poll measures employment throughout the entire nation, not just certain areas.
methodology for said scientific polling is found below.
There are about 60,000 eligible households in the sample for this survey. This translates into approximately 110,000 individuals each month, a large sample compared to public opinion surveys, which usually cover fewer than 2,000 people. The CPS sample is selected so as to be representative of the entire population of the United States. In order to select the sample, all of the counties and independent cities in the country first are grouped into approximately 2,000 geographic areas (sampling units). The Census Bureau then designs and selects a sample of about 800 of these geographic areas to represent each state and the District of Columbia. The sample is a state-based design and reflects urban and rural areas, different types of industrial and farming areas, and the major geographic divisions of each state. (For a detailed explanation of CPS sampling methodology, see Chapter 1 of the BLS Handbook of Methods.)
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#why
why employment statistics are skewed
1. Changes to the Employment Situation Data
The BLS said, “Establishment survey data have been revised as a result of the annual benchmarking process and the updating of seasonal adjustment factors. Also, household survey data for January 2014 reflect updated population estimates.” The numbers were benchmarked to reflect comprehensive counts of payroll jobs for March 2013.
2. Long-Term Unemployment
The BLS data showed that the total number of long-term unemployed, those on benefits for 27 weeks or more, fell by 232,000 in January to 3.6 million. This is 35.8% of the total unemployed. The BLS showed that long-term unemployed has declined by 1.1 million over the past year.
3. Annual Adjustment to the Population Controls
The civilian labor force was shown to have risen by 499,000 in January. The labor force participation rate ticked up to 63.0% from 62.8% in December. This remains close to a 35-year low. Total employment in the household survey rose by 616,000 over the month, and the employment-population ratio increased by 0.2 percentage points to 58.8.
4. Part-Time Effects
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons showed a drop of 514,000 to 7.3 million in January. The BLS said, “These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time work.”
5. Marginal Attached Workers
Some 2.6 million people were considered to be marginally attached to the labor force in January. While this is noted as “little changed from a year earlier,” they were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks ahead of the survey. In the marginal group, there were 837,000 discouraged workers in January — people not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.8 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in January had not searched for work for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
6. Weather
Cold weather in the Midwest and Northeast has to be a factor here in jobs not getting filled. That being said, the revision in nonfarm payrolls for December was only by a tiny 1,000. Weather is permitted to be an excuse, but at some point people looking for work (and companies that have job openings and interviews) cannot get away with the excuse that they just could not physically make it there.
The points brought up here are directly from the BLS, and color has been added or explained. The numbers just do not seem right on the surface, but — as usual — there are explanations for what may be driving this. Of the 12,000 decline in government employees, the U.S. Postal Service was shown to be 9,000 of that number.
All these exceptions or skewed data prevented the unemployment report from wildly swinging stocks and bonds on Friday.
February 8, 2014
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