The July 2009 Employment Situation Report (080709)
The key seasonally adjusted numbers: The unemployment rate is 9.4% (down by 0.1%), and 247,000 jobs were lost.
That beat expectations of 9.5% or 9.6% and 320,000 jobs lost.
When I heard the White House and I believe even Obama himself start on Sunday and Monday with the “it’s going to get worse” stuff, I had a suspicion that they either had an idea what the real result was going to be, or that they looked at last year’s on-the-ground number and said “no way that happens again.” They created low expectations and either bet (or knew) that the result wouldn’t be as bad.
Of course, they’re not supposed to have this info; in fact, I’m pretty it’s illegal to get it in advance, because those who possess such advance information have the ability to take financial advantage of it. So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.
I didn’t think the job-loss number would be worse than June’s revised -443,000 (it was -467,000), and I’m not surprised that it went down. That’s simply because when you look at the on-the-ground not seasonally adjusted numbers, you realize that for things to have gotten worse, a lot more than 1.4 million jobs would have had to go away in July:
The raw numbers above led to this seasonally adjusted result, including revisions to May and June:
Thus, in the 13th full month of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy (which actually began during June 2008), now the POR Recession/”Repression” As Normal People Define It, what the administration will more than likely cite as a sign that things are getting recognizably better is in reality only a result that is 50% or more worse than any full month before the the POR economy began (the lowest ratio is July 2009’s 247K divided by April 2008’s 160 = 1.54).
We’re supposed to be impressed?
Looking ahead to the rest of the year, it’s obvious that for the monthly job-loss number to get to zero or to go positive, a lot of real net hiring is going to have to talk place on the ground. That will be the acid test of whether any recovery in the job market is really taking place. Never discount the American people’s ability to work around government-imposed barriers, but this administration has put so much FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) into the system that we shouldn’t be at all surprised if little if any net on-the-ground hiring takes place. Obviously, I hope that’s not the case.
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Update: Joe C, in his comment below, had me look into the government element of the jobs change. It turns out that government dominates the traditionally largely negative on-the-ground July number, meaning that the White House could be pretty confident that the overall number wouldn’t get worse, and might get better.
Update 2: By the way, the assertion I made after June’s report that it was the worst June on the ground (not seasonally adjusted) since BLS has been keeping monthly records is still true. The 69,000 jobs lost as seen above is both the largest, and the largest as a percentage of the workforce, during June during all of that time.
Update 3: In the Something’s Gotta Give Dept. — The combined seasonally adjusted jobs-lost number for June and July , based on calls to employers, was 690,000, or about 0.44% of the workforce. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rates for May and July were both 9.4%. These two trends can only continue if a lot of people are on net leaving the workforce. Two months does not a trend make, but it bears watching. A couple more similar months and the conclusion that the workforce is shrinking will be pretty hard to escape. We may find that “going Galt” is not just a high-producer/high-earner phenomenon.
How much of the drop is due to an increase in government hiring?
Comment by Joe C. — August 7, 2009 @ 9:43 am
#1, seasonally adjusted, gov’t is +7, but I wouldn’t make too much of that.
NSA for the government was -1155 vs. -1153 last year.
That means that NSA for the private sector was -178 (-1333 above minus -1155) vs. -258 last year (-1401 minus -1153).
So the private sector situation deteriorated less severely. In the context of the past few years, it’s a pretty decent result.
Your comment reveals an insight as to why the admin was able to play the expectations game this week. Because the govt. dominates July’s traditionally highly negative number, there was very good reason to believe it wouldn’t get worse beyond a mere hunch.
Comment by TBlumer — August 7, 2009 @ 9:57 am
Heh, I can see it now, liberals will say, “see, even the anti-Obama Bizzyblog says that Obama managed to attain a pretty decent result.”
Comment by zf — August 7, 2009 @ 11:31 am
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Pingback by MY FELLOW DEMs: It’s Time for a Chat about Unions « Temple of Mut — August 7, 2009 @ 3:00 pm
Actually, #1, you should ask how much of this drop is a result of people dropping off the unemployment roles to the “Not in Labor force” # when it jumped by 637,000 people.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
The drop in the Civilian labor force number isn’t anything to crow about as well, so #3 it’s a pretty crappy result, hardly decent by any standard of measure. In fact the only reason for the so called drop in the % number is a direct result of the disproportionate drop between the Civilian Labor Force and unemployment #. The denominator (Civilian Labor Force) dropped proportionally slower than the numerator (unemployment).
Comment by dscott — August 7, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
I agree dscott, but unfortunately for us liberals don’t look into things that deep and will seize upon any little tiny seemingly positive appearance in the economy and credit Obama and/or lib policies for it, just as they would like at what Tom wrote and seize on the phrase “pretty decent” and use that as evidence that he agrees with them without even reading the rest of what was in there which was hardly Obama praising.
Comment by zf — August 7, 2009 @ 5:22 pm
The fundamentals aren’t there for a sustainable recovery:
http://www.news-to-use.com/2009/08/us-consumer-fundamentals-keep.html
An analysis of the sources of personal disposable income (PDI) so far in 2009 reveals that significant but unsustainable tax rebates have benefited consumer spending. Looking forward, most, if not all components of PDI are trending down for the rest of 2009, which would take expenditures below their December 2008 low.
BTW this is a sucker’s rally.
http://www.news-to-use.com/2009/08/equity-volume-still-lacking.html
Tom, I think this would be a good segway to my email on (Karl Popper) falsification of the Dem message.
Comment by dscott — August 8, 2009 @ 7:41 pm
Talking about employment, why is it the MSM has not reported since July that Obama has blocked new drilling of any kind?
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18211
If Obama is so keen on saving and creating jobs then why did he pass on the opportunity to create 1.2 million jobs? For a man who is desparate for tax revenue, why is he blocking the opportunity to collect it?
* Americans from enjoying 1.2 million new, well-paying jobs annually across the country and $70 billion in additional wages each year.
* And the federal government from receiving over $2.2 trillion in total tax receipts — revenue that would go a long way towards addressing the historic $1.8 trillion deficit that reportedly keeps the President awake at night.
Comment by dscott — August 9, 2009 @ 11:57 am
Also affecting employment will be the stiffeling effect of Cap and Trade if implimented. The EIA is forecasting zero growth of the GDP to 2030. That means with a population increase over that period, unemployment will skyrocket.
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=18285
Comment by dscott — August 9, 2009 @ 12:10 pm