What to look for: LINKS to tomorrow's BLS jobs report for June 2012 [View all]

[ProgressiveEconomist]

and to estimates of the likely effects of the President's American Jobs Act

IMO, you simply cannot trust the major media to report the important economic news of the day without putting a sharp Republican political "spin" on it.

One way to avoid falling victim to propaganda is to get the raw news yourself and interpret it for yourself. Here's my 24-hours-ahead primer on how to do just that for the June jobs report tomorrow:

WHAT'S YOUR OPINION?

At 8:30 (Eastern) tomorrow morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the June 2012 employment report, at URL http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm . IMO, the key details for political purposes will be about sectors where Republicans have been carrying out economic SABOTAGE for YEARS. Look particularly at the last columns of lines in Table B-1 (at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm tomorrow) for "Construction" (about 11 lines from the top) and for "Government" (about 10 lines from the bottom). These figures show monthly job gains or losses, in thousands.

The May report (archived at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_06012012.htm ) showed losses of 28,000 construction jobs and 13,000 government sector jobs.

IMO, these statistics measure part of the sabotage effect of House and Senate Republican blocking of votes on the transportation bill and on President Obama's million-plus-job American Jobs Act, announced last fall. IMO, last month's disappointing jobs report was the first to show unmistakably the fingerprints of Republican sabotage of the economic recovery President Obama engineered over the last 3 years. Stronger reports earlier in 2012 hid Republicans' dirty work, and would have been even stronger without their sabotage.

Look at the IMO likely June drops in construction and government jobs and ask yourself what the overall (non-farm) job growth figure would have been for June without Republican sabotage. Ironically, the Republicans finally are getting what they wanted--weak jobs reports--but the reports may have unexpected consequences for them--exposing their deliberate sabotage of the economy.

Tomorrow afternoon, President Obama will sign the transportation bill, finally approved June 29th after two years of Republican obstruction (see http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002878684 ). I expect the President to stress most of the points I've made here.

IMO the President also will outline again the importance of his American Jobs Act, introduced last fall. John McCain's campaign economist in 2008, Mark Zandi of Moody's, estimated that the AJA would create 1.9 million jobs, take a full percentage point off the unemployment rate, and increase the economic growth rate by two percentage points. See the link to his report and other independent economists' reports at http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/07/economists-president-s-plan-will-create-jobs-now-gop-s-won-t ).