Posted on 03/07/2025 6:19:41 AM PST by Redmen4ever
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 151,000 in February, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.1 percent, ...
(Excerpt) Read more at bls.gov ...
The part time work is in line with the 34.1 hourly work week. Forecasts were that it would pick up a bit, I’m actually surprised it didn’t drop more.
I don’t think the reduced govt jobs will hit until later in the year. If I remember correctly you have to burn through your severance pay before you can apply for unemployment.
Challenger said DOGE cut 62,000 gubment jobs. WILD THING! YOU MAKE MY HEART SING!
Thanks for tipping me off as to the Challenger Report. Challenger concerns announcements and, so, may jump the establishment survey of the BLS (and, the JOLTS survey).
Layoffs have been high for a couple years now, kicked off by Elon Musk when he took over the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Musk did this to make the company profitable by making it leaner. Soon, Meta and other social media and tech companies were doing the same thing.
I’ve checked, and the evidence that layoffs cause recessions doesn’t reach the usual level of significance (conversely, recessions do cause layoffs). Accordingly, we can say that normally the economy can accommodate layoffs in its process of creative destruction.
“The labor force participation rate, at 62.4 percent, changed little over the month and over the year.”
It says see table A1 yet table A1 shows no percentages. Hence while it changed i assume it changed for the better.
That is not how unemployment is calculated.
The unemployment percent is calculated from the Household survey, the Census Bureau does on behalf of the Labor Dept. They call 75,000 households, randomly selected phone numbers, both landline and mobile, and ask for the employment status of everyone in the household.
If you are not working and looking for work, you are unemployed. If you are not working but have not looked for a job in the last 4 weeks, you are not considered a part of the work force and are not counted as unemployed.
The number of jobs gained or lost are compiled from the Establishment survey and are completed by companies. It is required by every company or there is a fine.
I completed this questionnaire occasionally for the company I used to work for. It is a large company (over 2K), but we gathered these stats every month anyway, so it was not a big deal.
The Household survey is considered more accurate in the sense that it catches the creation/destruction of businesses sooner, as it can capture a small start up immediately, while the Establishment survey lags by about 6 months since it does not capture new businesses right away.
Sometimes the surveys are contradictory, but the Establishment survey will generally catch up to the Household survey within 6 to 12 months. If it does not, the government trues up the unemployment stats with the Establishment survey once a year.
You may recall, that last summer/fall, the number of jobs created was reduced by a million plus - that was the government truing up the surveys.
Anyway, I went into way more detail than I had planned. Filing for unemployment does not affect the stats at all. And you can file for unemployment while receiving severance, but it may affect how much you get - maybe zero in some cases, but if zero, you will start receiving unemployment right away when severance is completed without filing again.
What will be interesting to see is if jobs acquired by CITIZENS increases. As opposed to the last 3 years when the majority of all jobs went to non-citizens.
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