WASHINGTON – President Obama got an unexpected boost on Friday, with the unemployment rate dropping below 8 percent for the first time since he took office and providing him with new ammunition in his battle to convince voters that his economic policies are working, albeit slowly.
“More Americans entered the workforce, more people are getting jobs,” Obama told a boisterous crowd at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. “We are moving forward again.”
Comments
I was wondering when the govt would fake the numbers. Obama can't debate, so change the jobs numbers.
Ah, conspiracy theorists!
A Jack Welch Tweet: Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change number
Amusing... so this power to change the numbers, why didn't they use that all during Obama's presidency?
look at U6
Markets don't seem to believe the news. Gold prices spiked DOWN by $10 immediately afterwards.
First, gold losing value is a sign of good times. Second, your verb. Spike is used to indicate rising, try "tumbled".
kate is right. People buy gold to protect themselves when they're fearful of the economic future. Generally it's a poor investiment for any other purpose because it earns no interest.
The CNBC finance chick was on MSNBC this morning and she said that there are 80 economists at Morgan Stanley who are arguing these numbers are bogus. Again. It is true that virtually every one of these reports has been adjusted 'significantly downward' in 39 out of 44 months a few weeks later. Is the media really going to sell us this propanganda like they sold us the Libya story??!?
Well it depends whether you are more inclined to believe an organization of relatively low-paid economists and statisticians who can only earn as much as their federal pay grade allows, or an organization of high paid bankers who have personal financial interests in a political campaign?
User is in denial -- as user always is.
We go right back into the double-dip no later than 2014 if Obama is re-elected or if the senate remains Democrat. Even Obama losing the election may not be enough to avoid this.
All of the money Obama wasted and all of the bills for his fantasies come due AFTER the election! Timing on purpose.
Stimulus was purposely delayed two years ago so that you would "feel" it kicking in just before the election! Neat trick but that meant you were miserable and spinning your wheels going nowhere for an extra two years while Obama and Democrats played this game.
Sorry, cowboy, the original stimulus bill (ARRA) was signed in mid-February of 2009, one month after Obama took office. It began to take effect in most states in mid-March of that same year. By the mid-term elections in November 2010, it was winding down, and the President was advocating for an extension of it or a new one altogether. Your chronology, although it serves your conspiracy theory, is incorrect.
The Chicago gang & the Obamas like living in the Washington WHite House.
How convenient. We all know that when the numbers are adjusted, as they always are, the rate will be above 8% but no media will publish it. Just the way it is.
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Is there anybody in the U.S. that believes anything that is reported out of Washington a month before the presidential election?????
Or any position that Mitt Romney takes? Ever?
Interesting comment from Welch that probably says more about his own approach to corporate governance than anything. You have to wonder when he will start complaining about the hidden Socialist Commies in Congress, too.
Unemployment fell to 7.8%. That number does not include the people whose unemployment benefits have ended.
That's actually not true. From BLS: "Is the count of unemployed persons limited to just those people receiving unemployment insurance benefits? No; the estimate of unemployment is based on a monthly sample survey of households. All persons who are without jobs and are actively seeking and available to work are included among the unemployed."
buggie, You may want to reread the BLS report. It is a survey.
Consider that if labor force participation had held even since January (when it was 8.3 percent), the jobless rate would be 8.4 percent. If the job participation rate were the same as when Barack Obama took office, the rate would be 10.7 percent. The broader U-6 rate (unemployed plus total employed part time for economic reasons) held steady at 14.7 percent. Obama can spin the numbers anyway he likes, but this is not an economic “recovery” in a meaningful sense. We are adding fewer jobs on average per month than we did last year (143,00 vs. 153,000).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/this-is-no-jobs-recovery/2012/10/05/75174676-0eec-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_blog.html
Quoting one of Jennifer Rubin's opinion columns as an unbiased primary source may not be wise. If you'd care to match opinionated sources, I'd probably pick the interpretation written by a Nobel laureate in economics. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/opinion/krugman-cleaning-up-the-economy.html
Krugman. LOL
Romney noted the number of Americans still looking for work, living in poverty, or dependent on food stamps. ------- But these people won't vote for him anyway why does he care? And I love Boehner's comment...the Republican's can't be happy for any news.
I was "unemployed" for 18 months between the fall of 2010 and spring of 2012. Most of that time I worked two part time jobs. Some weeks I worked more than 30 hours and couldn't claim unemployment, but that was rare and I usually was simulatenously employed part-time (paying taxes) and unemployed. Apparently, from reading the BLS web site, collecting unemployment benefits isn't the measure used for the unemployment rate. This kind of makes me angry: a month after losing my full-time, salaried consulting job with benefits, I started waiting tables part time. Apparently if I had been included in the household survey at that time, I would have contributed to a lower unemployment rate. That's utterly crazy. Unemployment should be measured by those collecting unemployment benefits, those whose benefits have run out but are still actively seeking work, and those who voluntarily left a job/finished school and are actively seeking work. I do think that employment has actually improved in recent months--definitely in some parts of the country rather than others--but what the statistic actually means is confusing and somewhat arbitrary.
Any method of administering the survey will leave some people dissatisfied because the criteria are subjective even if the actual results are objective.
What's important is being able to compare the results from month to month, which we can do.
Like it or not, it has been applied consistently in the same manner, which does allow for month to month analysis. The calculation of the rate has changed over the years, but not for a long time now. There are definitely more people woring now than there were just six months ago. Informal, anecdotal evidence alone, such as morning and evening traffic, will tell you that. There are significant more commuters now than there were in the spring. There was hardly any commuter traffic drop-off during this past summer, unlike in previous years. The progress may not be fast, but it is really happening.
I think I might have been too pessimistic about the effect of Obama's performance in the debate. Romney was fast talking and flipping himself from the right to the middle. Just maybe it was one flip too many and a flop with the voters.
This morning's Gallup rolling poll shows Obama gained a point on Thursday.
And now this morning's jobs report. I'm not interested in parsing the minutia of the report with this forum's amateurish economists. That's a waste of time. Overall, the jobs report is a positive one. That can't be denied by any sensible person with a normal brain.
Romney's 11% statistic is correct, but very misleading. There are no more people who have given up this month than there were last month, and in fact, there are less. "Discouraged workers," as the BLS calls them, are always counted separately, so you can't compare 7.8% "unemployed" plus 3.2% "discouraged" to usual measures of just "unemployed." And the crazy thing is, the number of "discouraged" workers has been dropping consistently for the past year. So Romney throwing out this 11% isn't a point against the argument that the jobs situation IS improving. Is it still a problem that all counts of unemployment are still high relative to pre-recession? Yes. But has the jobs situation been improving? Also yes. Bottom line is the basic measure of unemployment improved this month relative to last month, and it is at its lowest point in four years. In addition to that, the number of discourage workers also fell relative to previous months.
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Welch is now entering the "crazy uncle" phase of his life. Like all statistics the story may not be what it seems. However, to charge that these stats were cooked up is reckless.
In yesterday's Globe was as Globe headline "Obama Team Recalculating". --What does that mean? I think that means that the Obama Labor Dept. and Hilda Solis, "RECALCULATED" Friday's NFP report. Even though there were only 114,000 new jobs created last month, (which was exactly the expected count) the Unemployment rate suddenly dropped from 8.2% to 7.8%! Well, the only way to produce that mathematical feat is to "Recalculate" the total number of "jobs" available, by not counting any jobs that are PERMANENTLY gone. (e.g. around here, just pretend that all of the jobs at Borders Bookstores never existed at all). --And that exactly what the Obama mathematicians did. They RECALCULATED the jobs number. Then Obama and his Chicago boys claimed that, Abra Cadabra, the economy was suddenly getting better! --Here's a prediction: Althougth there will be plenty of layoffs next month, especially from military contractors like Lockheed Martin, the unemployment rate will fall to 3.3%!
Miker6 --- are you a paid commenter? or a member of the Romney campaign? I bet you are! You and that old fool Jack Welch spreading these conspiracy theories when you know very well that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is independent from any administration. You also would know / should know that the the unemployment number is calculated based upon the survey of homes and is affected by the positive increase in prior months. Stop spreading unthruths ..... oh but then again you work for the "Romney Lyan" team.
"Paranoia strikes deep; into your life it will creep . . . . " Dude, you have completely lost it.
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Here's what the market thought of the Bush economy on the day he left office:
Dow Jones Industrial Average = 7949
Here's what the market thinks of the Obama economy as of Friday:
Dow Jones Industrial Average = 13610
That's a 58% increase under Obama.
Obama is also a net job creator: "In the year following Obama's inauguration, the U.S. economy lost about 4.3 million jobs. But new figures released Thursday [Sept. 27] show 4.4 million jobs have been added back since then." (See "Obama may be a job creator after all" at http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/27/news/economy/obama-job-creation/index.html ).
market is no longer a indicator as it has been taken offer by HFT
What does that mean? Are you saying if we "fixed" the HFT problem/factor that the DJIA (and the economy) would once again look like it did under Bush? Try telling people whose retirement incomes are tied to the stock market that it's no longer an indicator. You're not credible.
Economists claim you need job growth numbers of 140,000 to 250,000 just to keep even with population growth. In prevous reporting periods, a number like 140,000 would have resulted in a net change in the unemployment rate of about 0%. Dang it Jim, I'm a physicist, not an economist, but years of accumulating knowledge from news papers in this area would have had an amateur like me predict a 0% change again. I don't see a conspiracy, but I'd sure like an explanation from some experts why 140,000 had such different effect on unemployment rate this time around.
The change in numbers is due to the "Chicago Gang' who moved into the Whitehouse with the Obamas. But wait - there is going to be another change in numbers 4 days before the Presidential election .......guess whether or not the numbers will show further job growth.
Typical for the Boston Globe Democrat (BGD), the title for this article "Obama gets lift on jobs front" insinuates that there is a lift in the polls.
Every economist on the planet is saying these numbers are bogus! Even half the media is refusing to participate in this lie and are running stories on why the numbers are bogus! And then look at the Globe...
there you go again exagerating ..... "every" economist? No just the right wing conspiracy theory nuts like some on here and Jack Welch who is just an old curmudgeon.
The chart is basically, self-explanatory, but let’s review it anyway. During the last two years–the second half of Obama’s term, so let’s forget about George W.–the population of the U.S. has grown by 2.20%. Jobs have failed to keep up, as the labor force has grown hardly at all, only 0.88%. What has grown–and this is the true legacy of the Obama disaster–is Americans who are not in the labor force, up by 4.58%, more than double the rate of population growth. Chart here:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/10/obamas-jobs-failure-in-one-chart.php
I love it ....the party of Know nothing is sticking their heads in the sand even deeper than normal or are they sticking them up their own posterior orifices as usual. Funny these numbers were very important on Wednesday night.