Zero Manufacturing Jobs Added. Zero.

[progree]

78. Source of data? (BTW in March we supposedly lost 513,000 part time jobs)

Last edited Mon May 6, 2013, 11:59 AM - Edit history (1)

[font color = blue]JayhawkSD>We added 165,000 last month and are celebrating as it we won the unemployment war, with the stock market shooting to record highs.

But part time jobs increased by 441,000 that same month. That means we lost 276,000 full time jobs. <[/font]

Where do you get these numbers? The 165,000 came from the establishment survey of businesses (top row of http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm or http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.b.htm ) while the 441,000 part time jobs came from the household survey (the sum of "Part time for economic reasons" and "Part time for non-economic reasons" http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm

The two surveys often don't agree with each other month to month -- often there are big differences between the two. Also, especially with the household survey, the components are extremely highly volatile from month to month. Just to give you an idea, the seasonally adjusted data for "Part time for economic reasons" http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12032194

is this:
Part time for economic reasons, Seasonally Adjusted: monthly changes:
[font face = courier new]
..... Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jn Jl Aug Sept Oct. Nov. Dec.
2012: 52 -93 -463 232 220 94 35 -202 564 -321 -148 -220
2013: 55 15 -350 278[/font]



I don't know how to get the data series for total part time, or I'd show that. I highlighted the "Part time for economic reasons" because these are the ones who want full time work and are available for it, i.e. the "involuntary part-time", according to the BLS.

Obviously, the wild oscillations month to month are mostly data noise, as nobody with at least a room temperature IQ really believes that number of part time workers wanting full time work really jumps up and down like that.

One of the favorite tactics of the righties is to prey on people who don't know about the volatility of some of these component statistics and to pick the worst components of the month to highlight, and this month it is the part time jobs.

As stated above, the part time jobs from March to April increased by 441,000, according to the household survey.

Contrast that with the previous month -- going from February to March, for example, the part time jobs fell by 513,000 (350,000 for economic reasons and 163,000 for non-economic reasons http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm), but our good friends on the right had nothing to say about that.

Also, "Employed" fell by 206,000 from February to March, supposedly meaning that full time jobs went up by 307,000 -- +307,000 full time MINUS 513,000 part time EQUALS -206,000 total.

Actually, I don't think the sum of part time plus full time = total employment or total jobs either -- thanks to workers holding multiple jobs.

But hey, our good friends on the right won't let complications like that get in the way of a good story -- anything to trash the economy and get a Republican Senate in 2014.

ON EDIT - I forgot to note that over the past year (April'13/April'12) part-time jobs increased only 60,000, while "Employed" increased 1,645,000 (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm ). So this also doesn't support the meme that most / all the job gains are part-time, let alone that part-time jobs are replacing full time jobs.

[font color = blue]JayhawkSD>The work week shrank by .2 hours. For 155,238,000 workers, that's the equivalent of cutting 776,000 full time jobs.<[/font]

I could comment on the hours too -- same story -- high volatility from month to month (e.g. it went up 0.1 hours from Feb. to March). But looking at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.b.htm , over the past year, from April 2012 to April 2013, it went from 34.5 hours to 34.4 hours, so that is a reason to be disturbed.