Check out Hobbs' take on the jobs data I wrote about last Friday. "Today, 139,660,000 Americans have jobs, more than at any time in our nation's history."
Hobbs digs into the data to offer some clarity that needs to be understood if one is to really reflect current economic conditions:
"First, the 32,000 figure has a statistical quirk in it: July is one of two months, the other being January, that the government statisticians simply assume that a certain percentages of businesses fail, and they reduce the jobs-growth estimate by tens of thousands of jobs to account for it....Second, the 32,000 figure reflects only "nonfarm payroll jobs," which....generally misses small businesses, especially newer small businesses, and always misses self-employed people. The real number you should focus on is this one: Total employment in America rose by 629,000 to 139.66 million people in July, based on the government's Household Survey, which is also the data on which the official unemployment rate is based. Unemployment dropped a tenth of a percent in July."
What has happened to jobs since January 2001?
-"The unemployment rate has fallen from 6.2 percent in July 2003 to 5.5 percent now.
-"The number of unemployed people has fallen from 9.1 million in july 2003 to 8.2 million now.
-"In Jaunary 2001....135,999,000 Americans had jobs. By October of that year, the number of Americans with jobs had slumped to 134,562,000 - as the sudden negative economic impact of the 9/11 attacks combined with the economic slowdown that began almost a year before Bush took office (with the stock market collapse in April 2000) to cause unemployment to surge."
