Posted on 10/31/2004 5:18:09 PM PST by crushelits
Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. employers probably added 175,000 workers to payrolls in October, the most in five months, while the unemployment rate held at a three-year low of 5.4 percent, the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists shows.
The Labor Department's report will be released three days after the Nov. 2 presidential election, which polls show is a toss- up. President George W. Bush says his tax cuts have helped the economy, while Democratic challenger John Kerry says they haven't boosted jobs.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=71000001&refer=home&sid=avn64.gOLNdI
bttt
Many American firms can't expand here because there simply aren't enough laborers available to fill the new jobs they could creat.
Two more days until the Buchanan/Tancredo anti-Bush xenophobes slither back into their holes.
bttt
I have looked 3 times on Drudge and found nothing about new jobs, but read it earlier today on Bloomberg.
Waiting for Willie Green and the rest of the usual suspects to look for the dark lining in this silver cloud.
OK then, here's the dark lining. First of all, the estimated 175,000 new payroll jobs is just below the average of 179,500 new payroll jobs that were created each month from Carter through Clinton. Following are the number of payroll jobs created during each presidential term since Roosevelt's final term:
TOTAL NONFARM EMPLOYMENT (thousands)
Annual
No. of Monthly Annual Avg thru
Term Mo Year Count Change Months Average Average Clinton
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roosevelt Jan 1941 34480 7423 48 154.6 1856 1632
Truman 1 Jan 1945 41903 2772 48 57.8 693 1616
Truman 2 Jan 1949 44675 5470 48 114.0 1368 1687
Eisenhower Jan 1953 50145 2743 48 57.1 686 1713
Eisenhower Jan 1957 52888 795 48 16.6 199 1807
Kennedy Jan 1961 53683 5900 48 122.9 1475 1968
Johnson Jan 1965 59583 9855 48 205.3 2464 2022
Nixon Jan 1969 69438 6182 48 128.8 1546 1967
Nixon/Ford Jan 1973 75620 5072 48 105.7 1268 2027
Carter Jan 1977 80692 10339 48 215.4 2585 2154
Reagan 1 Jan 1981 91031 5322 48 110.9 1331 2068
Reagan 2 Jan 1985 96353 10780 48 224.6 2695 2252
G.H. Bush Jan 1989 107133 2592 48 54.0 648 2105
Clinton 1 Jan 1993 109725 11507 48 239.7 2877 2833
Clinton 2 Jan 1997 121232 11156 48 232.4 2789 2789
G.W. Bush Jan 2001 132388 -821 44 -18.7 -224
Sep 2004 131567
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total (Kennedy thru Clinton) 78705 480 164.0 1968
Total (Kennedy thru G.W. Bush) 77884 524 148.6 1784
Source: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ce, Series CES0000000001
The above table is updated through September of 2004. If we did in fact add 175,000 new payroll jobs in October, Bush's average since January 2001 will rise from minus 18.7 thousand to minus 14.4 thousand jobs per month.
Of course, some will point to the household survey, according to which the American economy has added 1.6 million net new jobs since January 2001. Most experts suggest that the true jobs figure is likely somewhere between the figures from the payroll and household surveys. Still, even if one accepts the household survey figure, the 1.6 million new jobs in the 44 months since January 2001 comes out to 436 thousand jobs per year. As the above table shows, that is the lowest rate of job creation since Eisenhower's second term.
The household survey is also where the unemployment rate comes from. It is true that the current 5.4 percent rate is the lowest since a 5.0 percent rate in September of 2001. However, part of this drop is due to the relative shrinking of the labor force illustrated in the following graph:
CIVILIAN LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE (percent, seasonally adjusted)
The figures for this and a number of other employment statistics can be found at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/jobs.html. If the labor force participation rate was currently at its January 2001 level of 67.2 percent, the labor force would be 150.545 million instead of 147.483 million. If those additional 3.062 million people were counted as unemployed, the unemployment rate would be 7.3 percent, not 5.4 percent. Of course, it's not clear exactly why the labor force participation rate has shrunk. Whatever the cause, however, this is part of the reason for the drop in the unemployment rate.
One other negative bit of employment data is the average number of weeks unemployed. It's currently at 19.6 weeks, down from a high of 20.3 weeks in February of this year. As the following graph shows, that is the highest level since 1950 except for the three month period from May to July of 1983.
AVERAGE NUMBER OF WEEKS UNEMPLOYED (16 years and over, seasonally adjusted)
In summary, if I were a Bush supporter, I would avoid dwelling on employment data this close to the election.
And who do you support, other than Paul Krugman?
Nice charts. Do you have the "Misery Index"?
The real one -- not the democrat phony orc of an index but the genuine misery index?
There is not a shred of evidence to support that claim.
What has Paul Krugman got to do with anything? If you have any specific disagreements with any of my numbers or any alternate data that you think are relevant, post it.
The real one -- not the democrat phony orc of an index but the genuine misery index?
No, I don't have the "Misery Index". I've studied the components separately but have never assigned enough significance to their combination to study the index. Afterall, the "genuine misery index" that you refer to is simply the unemployment rate added to the inflation rate (some people also add the short-term interest rate). This implies that a certain inflation rate causes the same amount of misery regardless of whether wages are going up or down. It also implies that one percent of unemployment causes the same misery as one percent of inflation and that these two items accurately describe all misery.
In any case, I do have graphs of the separate components. The following graph shows the unemployment rate:
and the following graph shows the inflation rate:
An interesting thing about the above graph is that it shows something of a correlation between growth in the CPI (Consumer Price Index) and growth in the M2 money supply. In addition, inflation (measured as a 10-year trailing average) peaked around 1814, 1864, 1920, 1951, and 1982. This is at the end or shortly after the war of 1812, the Civil War, the First World War, the Second World War, and the Vietnam War. Hence, the inflation under Carter may have been largely due to a war that he had nothing to do with. In addition, it raises the chance of future inflation if the cost of the Iraq War remains high. This chance of inflation may also be increased by the fact that the growth in the M2 money supply has started heading back up though inflation has not yet followed in a meaningful way, at least not according to official statistics.
Hey, I'm not your posting monkey! However, I did post a graph of the unemployment rate above. In addition, I'll post the average weekly earnings in 1982 dollars below:
Come clean and tell us whose monkey you really are then.
This is an amazing analysis that you've shown here with your money supply chart. Who would have ever thunk it...an increase in money supply is strongly correlated to an increase in CPI! That's genius man, you could gain some prominence by getting that published somewhere...truly a cutting edge theory.
I understand perfectly that your support of Paul Krugman is irrelevant (did I mention you support Paul Krugman?) to this thread.
Thank you.
I'm an Independent. I would prefer to see two (or more) strong parties, each nominating highly-qualified candidates. That way, the country will prosper no matter who is elected. Hence, I'm not the monkey of any party. Whose monkey are you?
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