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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Real Man who wrote (67251)	11/11/2003 7:49:24 AM
From: Real Man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

"Okay. Where was I? Here: Each month, each participating employer (the list is confidential) files a report (most are done by touch-tone phone, some still by mail/fax, with a goal toward electronic filing under way) with the respective state agency. The state, in turn, compiles a report and submits it to the BLS. Right now, they are canvassing about 390k businesses, so the universe is indeed, very respectfully, broad. We also recall that, contrary to the guidelines for the Household Survey, the CES will count a single body as many times as he/she appears on any payroll during the reference period. Striking workers are also counted as employed, as are any replacement hires, so in theory, you could have a double-count right there. "Whatever. Let's just cut to the chase and see what October hath wrought. Ahem. Right off the bat, despite the fact that 126k jobs were created in October, the Household Survey tells us that 'the number of unemployed persons, 8.8 million, were essentially unchanged in October. . . . In October, 2.0 million unemployed persons had been looking for work for 27 weeks or longer, about the same level as September. They represented 23% of the total unemployed. . . . Labor force participation rate remained at 66.1%. . . .' "And now for one of the favorite topics, the figures for those no longer counted but still out of work, for a host of reasons, noting that 'discouraged' is a category with its very own definition: 'In October, 1.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, 170,000 more than a year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals wanted and were available to work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed, however, because they did not actively search for work in the four weeks preceding the survey. Of the 1.6 million, 426k were discouraged workers . . . persons who were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them. The number of discouraged workers was up by 103,000 from October 2002. . . .' "See that? Whereas the Household Survey will drop you like a hot potato for not pounding the pavement regularly, the Establishment Survey will count you as a job creation if you only worked a single day, full or part-time, or will count you multiple times in a single report if your name shows up on multiple payrolls. Yet all this begs a question: If virtually the same number of folks remain out of work, 8.8 million, what are we crowing about? Is there anything else that is unchanged in the picture? "Darn right there is. Check it out, recalling the 7.2% torrid growth rate of Q3: The average workweek gained only 1 hour (seasonally adjusted, of course!); Manufacturing workweek and Manufacturing Overtime were unchanged from September. How did wages do? Ha. Look: 'Average hourly earnings of production or nonsupervisory workers on private Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1 cent over the month to $15.46, seasonally adjusted. . . . Over the year, both average hourly and weekly earnings increased by 2.4%.' "So, what do you think of those details, eh? Not so hot, particularly in light of all the hot press the figures garnered, right? And the fact that the government was able to go back and find that so many more jobs were actually being created -- in a period when every Tom, Dick and Harry was calling for 'jobs creation of 150k per month, blah, blah, blah' -- is indeed a stroke of serendipity if ever there was one!