[lbo-talk] strong jobs report

[Nathan Newman]

It's worth noting that the jobs report also showed a drop in overall hours
worked, and a drop in the workweek.  The economy, despite spreading the jobs
around a bit better this month, is still not producing net new demand for
more hours of labor each month.

Nathan Newman

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christian Gregory" <christian11 at mindspring.com>
To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 10:42 AM
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] strong jobs report


>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

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