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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (58242)	11/3/2012 11:56:29 AM
From: greatplains_guy	Respond to of 71588

A Close Look at Jobs' Numbers Isn't Positive O lucky seasonal jobs adjustments are quirky By JOHN CRUDELE Last Updated: 11:42 PM, November 2, 2012 Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. President Obama should remember that as he quotes the latest unemployment statistics during these last few days of campaigning. In fact, he better hope nobody looks at the numbers too closely. Here are the basics you’ll see in other newspapers. The Labor Dept. reported that payroll employment increased by 171,000 jobs in October and the unemployment rate was “essentially unchanged” at 7.9 percent. That number of new jobs was better than expected. But since 150,000 or so new positions are needed each month just to absorb people first entering the work force, the kind of growth we saw in October — years after the recession ended — is still dismal and should get someone fired. At this rate, it’ll take a decade to get back the 6 million jobs that we’ve lost since the financial crisis. At 7.9 percent, the unemployment rate is extremely high for an incumbent President to overcome. But if you look deeper into the government’s numbers, the broader unemployment rate is even worse: 14.6 percent. That larger figure includes people who are “marginally attached” to the labor force and those who want full-time work but can find only part- time employment. Add to that all the people who have completely given up looking for work — and, therefore, aren’t counted anymore by Uncle Sam as unemployed — and the jobless figure would probably be over 20 percent. That’s one in five Americans, for crying out loud. But let me get to the part of the statistics where the President got real lucky. My regular readers should already know the difference between seasonally adjusted figures and the raw numbers that aren’t adjusted. Seasonal adjustments are done for legitimate reasons. They are meant to adjust for iirregular patterns of employment (holiday retail help) and unemployment (teachers off for the summer). Without the smoothing effect of seasonal adjustments all government stats would bounce around like Dolly Parton’s chest in a Jeep. And year-to-year these seasonal adjustments should be consistent — although sometimes, like this past October, they appear to go haywire. And in October’s case, they provided a very lucky, very timely bounce for the President. Here’s what I mean. If you look it up, the unadjusted job growth this October was 911,000 jobs. After seasonal adjustments, that number became the 171,000 number in all the headlines. In October 2011, the unadjusted gain in jobs was 895,000 — only 16,000 fewer than 911,000. But seasonal adjustments last year produced a headline number of 80,000 added jobs — later revised to 112,000. My point: the adjusted job growth figure — 171,000 — that you see in today’s headlines and on which President Obama will be campaigning is way out of proportion with the 80,000 headline number reported last October even though the unadjusted figures for the two Octobers show only a 16,000 difference. So, if the seasonal adjustment had stayed exactly the same from one October to the next, Labor yesterday could have reported as little as 96,000 new jobs. That would have been a disaster for President Obama. So he’s pretty lucky, don’t you think? Because I’m not an imbecile, I asked Labor the obvious question: could someone have tampered with the seasonal adjustments? “No, it’s really not possible,” said someone who knows the numbers well and says the discrepancies I noted weren’t much different from other years. “You can’t expect much stability” in the numbers,” he said. President Obama should play MegaMillions tonight. Because the man is on a lucky streak — at least until Tuesday. john.crudele@ny nypost.com

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (58242)	4/28/2013 10:12:41 AM
From: greatplains_guy	2 Recommendations Respond to of 71588

Economic growth disappoints, Americans’ income down, and more Americans believe country going in wrong direction Modified: April 26, 2013 at 10:50 am Conn Carroll United States stock markets are down this morning on news that the U.S. economy grew just 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013. Analysts had been expecting growth as high as 3.5 percent. According to the Commerce Department, Americans’ personal income fell 3.2 percent last quarter, as President Obama’s fiscal cliff tax hikes began taking more money from the American people. Separately, the Allstate-National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll released Thursday found that just 29 percent of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction. As recently as November, that number was as high as 41 percent. A total of 60 percent of Americans now believe the country is heading in the wring direction. The National Journal poll also showed most Americans now have a dim view of Obama’s economic agenda. Just 29 percent of Americans say Obama’s actions will increase opportunity for them. Meanwhile, 43 percent believe Obama’s actions will decrease economic opportunity and another 21 percent say they will have no impact. Asked whether Obama’s economic policies either “helped to avoid an even worse economic crisis, and are fueling economic recovery,” or “run up a record federal deficit while failing to significantly improve the economy,” just 40 percent say Obama’s economic policies have helped while 47 percent say they have failed. Alan Krueger, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, sees it differently. According to Obama’s top economist, everything is going fine. “Today’s report indicates that the economy posted its fifteenth straight quarter of positive growth … Over the last fifteen quarters, the economy has expanded by 8.3 percent overall, and the private components of GDP have grown by 12.2 percent … This report, together with other economic indicators, provides further evidence that the economy is moving forward in the right direction.” washingtonexaminer.com