Sunday, October 7, 2012
Number of the Week: 2.4 Million Found Jobs Last Month
2.4 million: The number of unemployed workers who found jobs in September.
That number likely sounds high, even for people who follow the job market relatively closely. The media, and even many economists, tend to focus on the headline jobs numbers, which are much smaller: Employers added 114,000 last month, down from 142,000 in August but up from the 45,000 jobs created in June. Link
A previous article revealed that the economy added over 114,000 jobs last month. However, this number is not quite accurate. Instead the economy added millions of jobs, but also in turn laid off millions. Does this provide a positive outlook for our economy or does it simply show the shifts in certain sectors of the economy?
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Well looking at the article it shows that, obviously, this is not a net number. The net number should be all we care about though as this doesn't talk about the firings and lay offs of workers as well. The huge increase of job creation from the summer is a good outlook for the future, but we still must see what the future holds. With being in the recession, we tend to get way to excited too early about good numbers, so optimism is good but like other related posts, we need to ride this out longer to see what happens before we can really get excited about this.
ReplyDeleteIt's really great that we added these jobs, and yes, the total number of jobs created is an important factor, I wonder if the production value of jobs created was higher. I find it interesting that they note the margin for error "Indeed, the margin of error on the monthly payroll figure is around 100,000 jobs." But all in all, I think the WSJ says it all in that keeping up with historical records, we're on the road, but far from home, "The labor market is healing, but it’s a long, long way from healed."
ReplyDeleteI believe that this article stands to support the idea that our economy is steadily improving. It may be slow progress, with decimal points added to various statistics like the employment additions, GDP growth, and consumerism at large--but it still is in a progress of steady improvement. After taking several classes on statistics, I've learned that minuscule variants in data can be largely tainted by factors like the 'margin of error'. The reality of this new statistical data is that improvements are slim, but surely in favor of forward progress in our economy.
ReplyDeleteI believe the inaccuracy in numbers shows more uncertainty in our economy than anything. High numbers of jobs created are being publicized to boost the appearance of our economy. When seeing the number of jobs created one usually takes this a positive and fails to think about the number of jobs lost. When publicizing information, the author or party involved has the ability to spin the facts by neglecting to tell the whole truth. One would image that if the number of job created were publicized in a purely factual matter, the number of job lost would accompany this information.
ReplyDeleteAs a follow up, check out this article by the Brookings Institution for more positive information on job market progress.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.brookings.edu/blogs/jobs/posts/2012/10/05-jobs-burtless?cid=em_alert10082012
I would argue that this only stands to illustrate shifts in different sectors of our economy. Economic growth will not spur job creation alone, as there are too many extraneous variables that hinder job creation already. Promotion of job creation in certain sectors alone will only individuals that are mobile to this sector. Job creation of certain sectors only benefits in the short term, whereas national unemployment is the larger (more important issue).
ReplyDeleteThe only way to ensure job creation is to stimulate investment returns from each firm, that functions as members of the private sector. With increasing profits, any firm is bound to hire more people to balance the work/profits. Instead of focusing on job creation in sectors like 'education, technology, and manufacturing', President Obama needs a plan for overall national employment if he has any hopes of long-term economic growth.