October 08, 2004 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Ouch!
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend upward in September, increasing by 96,000, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.4 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Over the prior 3 months, payroll employment rose by 103,000 on average.
More in a few minutes
Update1 The number of people who left the labor force jumped by 485,000, continuing the trend of recent months.
The number of persons who were marginally attached to the labor force was 1.6 million in September, about the same as 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 4 weeks preceding the survey. There were 412,000 discouraged workers in September, little changed from a year earlier.
Last September, there were 388K discouraged workers, or more than 6% fewer. I wonder when the term, "little changed" kicks in.
In comparison, the number of new jobs works out to an increase of 0.07%. Guess we should push the meme that employment was "little changed" to counter the even lukewarm spin the Administration attempts to put on this.
Update2 Manufacturing lost 18,000 jobs. The largest gain was in government jobs, with 37K added. Last months job numbers were revised down, from 144K to 128K.
Update3 Here's a comparison of the year prior to the re-election bids of both George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush.
numbers in thousands
Even Bush the Elder was able to eke out 2 million new jobs during his tenure, despite a recession and an anemic recovery. Jr. won't be as fortunate.
Yet another Update So much for Cheney's Ebay economy. The number of self-employed workers dropped by 211,000. Those are workers, btw, who generally do not show up in the new jobless claims numbers.
Posted by MB Williams at October 8, 2004 07:47 AM | TrackBackOuch is right. That was some corner we turned, right into a dead end alley.
Posted by: dwight at October 8, 2004 08:15 AMThis month's Le Monde Diplo has a lengthy piece on the voting poor in WV. Perhaps it is an artifact of how the Franco-Diplo class sees the rural poor, which isn't that different from how the Lefto-Blogo class sees the rural poor, but the LMD observes that the rural voters who are economically exploited more agressively under the Bush regime, are still more likely than not to vote for that regime -- because of religion.
Posted by: Eric at October 8, 2004 08:51 AM