The government collects two sets of employment data every month, a source of endless confusion because the two surveys sometimes provide widely varying pictures of the health of the job market. Add in the fact that some of the statistics, but not all, are seasonally adjusted, and confusion can easily reign.
The survey to which Wall Street pays the most attention is the establishment survey, which questions employers about how many people are on payrolls. It is that survey that provided disappointments this month, as it has done for most of the last few years. But the report of strong growth a month ago set off hopes that the employment picture was finally brightening.
That number shows 328,000 more jobs last month than in July, when employment hit its recent low. Even with those increases, there are now 2.26 million fewer jobs, on a seasonally adjusted basis, then there were in January 2001 when President Bush took office.
The other survey is the household survey, which involves asking questions of a sample of households reached each month by telephone. That survey is used to calculate the unemployment rate, and in recent years it has painted a less depressing picture of the employment situation.
The latest report finds that there are now 757,000 more people working than in January 2001, on a seasonally adjusted basis. That survey shows a seasonally adjusted gain over the last two months of 1 million people working, the largest two-month move since the first two months of 2000, at the peak of the economic boom.
Robert Barbera, the chief economist of ITG/Hoenig Securities, said there were other statistics, like a strong report on factory orders released yesterday, that indicated that the economy was improving. "I expect the establishment survey will fall in line," he said.
One measure of employment is the percentage of people 16 years and older who are working, a statistic based on the household survey. During the boom, that rose to a record 64.8 percent in April 2000. It fell to a low of 62 percent in September and has now edged back to 62.4 percent.
Such moves may seem tiny, but they involve a lot of people. If 64.8 percent of the working-age population still was working, total employment would be more than five million people greater than it actually is.
In any case, the rise in self-employment seems to be one bright spot. The increase of 156,000 self-employed workers means they now account for 6.6 percent of the people in the household survey who say they are working, up from 6.1 percent when President Bush took office.
Without that growth, it would be far harder to put a rosy tint on the employment record. But with them, it is possible to point to one government survey that indicates that more people are working now than at any time before.
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