The Romney Jobs Bump

Looking at the jobs report today, we see the household survey showing a massive 583,000 jump in the number of part-time workers, the largest since 1983. As part of the explanation, workers commented they took part-time because of "slack business conditions or the only jobs they could find."

I am not one to believe the numbers were faked. Nor do I necessarily believe, though I do not discount, the survey process being flawed to the point of causing this increase. I actually think it is because of a few reasons.

1. September is the time when kiddos go back to school and the parent who has stayed home during the summer, now has the ability to pick up a job to make up for the increased burden on families. I can see a rise here.

2. With people paying more attention to politics, and seeing the strong potential for a Romney win, or at the least a Republican takeover of the Senate, people, who may have been out of work for the last months or years, have come to the realization that their gravy train, namely unemployment benefits, will no longer be extended or supported. So, it's those workers trying to get ahead of the coming tide.

A couple of other very interesting data points consist of the food-stamp increase reported by the Department of Agriculture just in the last hours. This was after the markets closed heading into a typical no-news Saturday. Those statistics saw a massive 99,000+ increase in the number of households receiving food-stamps. This can be for a number of reasons but among them would be retirees finally running out of money and being forced onto the government dole (AND also taking part time jobs) as well as households having finally reached the breaking point.

Couple all this data together, at least until we see the revisions which will quietly be released in a couple of weeks, I believe this points to, for lack of a better term, a "Romney jobs bump."

The realization of being at a breaking point, out of money and knowing the government is no longer going to allow one or be able to allow one to NOT work, has led people back into the workforce.

" ...which would be where Reid and his party would be caught between a rock and a hard place when they are forced to vote AGAINST that extra aid to help those struggling to find a job in this miserable economy. "

Yes, do it and let the Democrats in Congress squirm.... do it now so the Republicans can make the Democrats look bad.

It's baloney.

They've been able to cook the books by using a very soft household survey component for part-time jobs; that's all. Your reasoning is faulty; the numbers are supposed to be seasonally adjusted, and, if anything September is a month of declining jobs as students and other seasonal workers head out of the job market.

Economists predicted there would be between 110-120,000 net new jobs in September, and because the economy must create roughly 205,000 new jobs per month to move the UE number down -0.1, the UE number would likely remain unchanged or increase to 8.2 if we had that number of new jobs. The BLS itself projected 115,000. The actual number was 114,000. The Underemployment number remained unchanged at 14.7%. The survey of employers going into the fourth quarter says most have not hired new workers in the past year, will not hire workers in the next quarter, and if anything intend to let people go. Manufacturing has had its worst two consecutive months since 0bama took office.

Part of the Fed's rationale for QE3 was that the jobs numbers were not where they needed to be, and they anticipated keeping interest rates steady (low) through mid-2015 and doing more easing to produce jobs. What has changed since the Fed QE3 announcement? Nothing except what happened on Wednesday Night.

These numbers cannot possibly be real and everyone knows it.

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