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http://www.cnbc.com/id/102243878
(note the left supporting news media site that gives this report)
Consider it a brutal lesson in government math.
Friday's turbocharged jobs headline came thanks to seasonal adjustments and other wizardry at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported that U.S. job growth hit 321,000 even as the unemployment rate held steady at 5.8 percent.
Those numbers, courtesy of establishment survey estimates, sound nice on the surface, and they certainly present reasons if not for unbridled optimism then at least confidence that the job market continues to mend and is on a pretty steady trajectory higher.
However, the household survey, which is an actual head count, presents details that show there's still plenty of work to do.
A few figures to consider: That big headline number translated into just 4,000 more working Americans. There were, at the same time, another 115,000 on the unemployment line. That disparity can be explained through an expanding labor force, which grew 119,000, though the participation rate among that group remained at 62.8 percent, which is just off the year's worst level and around a 36-year low.
But wait, there's more: The jobs that were created skewed heavily toward lower quality. Full-time jobs declined by 150,000, while part-time positions increased by 77,000.
Families, for instance, also were under pressure: There were 110,000 fewer married men at work, while married women saw their ranks shrink by 59,000.
And there was an exceedingly huge disparity between expectations and results: ADP's report Wednesday showed just 208,000 new private sector positions, compared with the 314,000 in the BLS report. That's a miss of 51 percent, the worst showing for ADP's count since April 2011 even though the firm has touted its partnership since then with Moody's Analytics as a way to make its count more accurate.
Some Wall Street analysts had been scaling back their calls, and Goldman Sachs, which has had a good history of picking the number, was expecting gains of 220,000. Even the most buoyant economist on the street, Joe LaVorgna at Deutsche Bank, was looking for 250,000.
Finally, there was a rather startling numerical coincidence: That same 321,000 figure was repeated later in the report—as the total number of bar and restaurant jobs created over the past 12 months.
Taken in total, a peek beneath the hood of these numbers suggests a job market that still has a ways to go.
(Read the full report here.)
(note the left supporting news media site that gives this report)
Consider it a brutal lesson in government math.
Friday's turbocharged jobs headline came thanks to seasonal adjustments and other wizardry at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported that U.S. job growth hit 321,000 even as the unemployment rate held steady at 5.8 percent.
Those numbers, courtesy of establishment survey estimates, sound nice on the surface, and they certainly present reasons if not for unbridled optimism then at least confidence that the job market continues to mend and is on a pretty steady trajectory higher.
However, the household survey, which is an actual head count, presents details that show there's still plenty of work to do.
A few figures to consider: That big headline number translated into just 4,000 more working Americans. There were, at the same time, another 115,000 on the unemployment line. That disparity can be explained through an expanding labor force, which grew 119,000, though the participation rate among that group remained at 62.8 percent, which is just off the year's worst level and around a 36-year low.
But wait, there's more: The jobs that were created skewed heavily toward lower quality. Full-time jobs declined by 150,000, while part-time positions increased by 77,000.
Families, for instance, also were under pressure: There were 110,000 fewer married men at work, while married women saw their ranks shrink by 59,000.
And there was an exceedingly huge disparity between expectations and results: ADP's report Wednesday showed just 208,000 new private sector positions, compared with the 314,000 in the BLS report. That's a miss of 51 percent, the worst showing for ADP's count since April 2011 even though the firm has touted its partnership since then with Moody's Analytics as a way to make its count more accurate.
Some Wall Street analysts had been scaling back their calls, and Goldman Sachs, which has had a good history of picking the number, was expecting gains of 220,000. Even the most buoyant economist on the street, Joe LaVorgna at Deutsche Bank, was looking for 250,000.
Finally, there was a rather startling numerical coincidence: That same 321,000 figure was repeated later in the report—as the total number of bar and restaurant jobs created over the past 12 months.
Taken in total, a peek beneath the hood of these numbers suggests a job market that still has a ways to go.
(Read the full report here.)
