Bottom line: 171,000 new jobs added in October. The unemployment rate ticked up from 7.8% to 7.9% because more people rejoined the labor force – per Neil Irwin, the WaPo’s economics reporter, “unemployment rate rose, but for good reason. 578k people joined labor force, only 410k of them found jobs.”
Even better are the revisions: September was revised upward by 36,000 jobs (from 114K to 148K), and August by 50,000 (from 142K to 192K). That is the second upward revision of August’s numbers, which initially showed a disappointing 96,000 new jobs, and have since been revised upward to a pretty good 142,000 and now to a much better 192,000.
So guess what, folks? According to the numbers, the economy is recovering. Team Romney will of course try to spin this as a bad jobs report, but nobody will believe them, because it’s not. This report allows President Obama to spend the last days of the campaign hammering home the message that he’s been pushing hard over the last several weeks (months, for that matter): we’re heading in the right direction, and we should stick with what’s working rather than go back to what crashed the economy four years ago.
Four days to go. Get out there and win.
stomv says
the unemployment rate may have been artificially low because some folks gave up looking for work. Similarly, the unemployment rate now may not fall as quickly (or may even rise) as the economy improves because people who had previously given up are now looking for work.
The fact is, we need to add about 100k jobs per month to deal with net new job market entrants — roughly speaking, the number of youngsters who have just recently finished their education and are looking for their first full time job, minus the folks who are retiring from their last full time job. Anything more than 100k jobs added in a month, and the overall economy (with respect to jobs) is improving. Anything less, and it’s gotten worse.
There’s no question that the jobs numbers are better than neutral, and they have been (that is, 100k+ net new jobs each month) since about January 2010. We’d be in even better shape if 2010 and 2011 didn’t see huge layoffs of public sector jobs — jobs which haven’t come back.