[lbo-talk] strong jobs report

[Christian Gregory]

>Also, the report says that the 308,000 jobs were created, but that the unemployment
(5.7%) and labor force participation rates remained the same. Can someone explain
to me how this happens statistically? What variable am I missing? Is it something
obvious? I don't quite get it and could use a bit of a primer.

Labor force participation comes from the household survey, jobs created from the establishment survey. The former shows that number unemployed increased by 182k, while the civilian labor force increased by 179k, so it's basically a wash in the unemployment rate. Likewise, 179k added to a labor force of 147 million has basically no effect on labor force participation.

Christian