Last Friday’s jobs report was interesting.
Reportedly, the economy added almost 300,000 jobs — which is certainly better than losing jobs — but not enough to to keep pace with the number of people entering (or re-entering) the labor force.
So, the unemployment rate went from 9.7% to 9.9%, the number of unemployed people increased to 15.3 million, and the underemployment rate — which includes people whose hours have been cut as well as those working part time because they cannot find full-time jobs — rose .2 to 17.1
President Obama’s take on April’s job report: “particularly heartening … showing that the “difficult and at times unpopular steps we’ve taken over the past year are making a difference.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20004423-503544.html
The media’s spin is that folks who were frustrated and stopped looking for work have turned optimistic, jumped off their couches, and took to the streets to look for jobs.
Or, it could simply be that their 99 weeks of unemployment compensation ran out and they had no choice but to start looking again.
I’m betting the latter, but we won’t be seeing much of that in the mass media …
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Math Note
Some of the bump in the unemployment rate was simply rounding.
The reported rate was 9.9% — up .2 from 9.7.
Unrounded, the unemployment rate rose to 9.863% from 9.749% in March.
That calcs to ‘only’ 0.114 percentage point.
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The Homa Files 