Jobless claims suddenly look great, once you discount California
This news comes on the heels of the controversial unemployment miracle report of last week. Gee, it’s almost as if giving the impression (and the headlines to follow; see, e.g., WRAL’s “US jobless claims fall to 339K, fewest in 4½ years“) of an Amazing, Eleventh-Hour Keynesian Miracle is of prime importance in what is, coincidentally, the last month of the presidential campaign.
Wall Street Journal writes “About That Unusually Large Drop in Jobless Claims“:
A Labor Department economist told Dow Jones that a big part of the decrease came about because one “large” state — they didn’t specify which one — didn’t report “additional quarterly figures as expected.” So while it may seem like one state reported fewer layoffs, that isn’t the case. It was purely a function of missing data, and next week the glitch should be smoothed out of the data. The state in question wasn’t specified.
CNN Money offers some more insight:
Many economists speculated that the state is California, but the Labor Department will not confirm that until it publishes its state breakdown next week.
“It was likely a state with a large population and we suspect that it was California based on the occasional massive swings that have occurred in its claims data in the past,” said Daniel Silver, economist at JPMorgan, in a note to clients.
Dutiful true believers in the media and elsewhere are still sitting in the data patch earnestly awaiting the Great Keynesian Recovery, Charlie Brown, hoping that their sincerity will be rewarded.
An ecstatic Linus is about to be embarrassed to discover
that his imaginary Great Pumpkin is actually just a dog.
One comment
It amazes me how much emphasis is placed on jobs reports—and jobs numbers in general. From presidential campaigns to city council races, politicians always talk about jobs—whether it’s touting how many they are going to create, how many their opponent didn’t create, or how often their opponent didn’t say the word during a debate. It drives me batty.
This time around, for example, everyone is focused on the unemployment number as it relates to the presidential race.
If it’s a good number, then the GOP (for the most part) say it’s a faulty method of measuring. If the number is high, then it’s proof the president is not creating jobs.
The fact of the matter is the number is a terrible representation of what’s really happening in this country. How?
1)Those with bachelor’s degrees have a 4.5 unemployment rate—a perfectly respectable number. (Those snobbish college grads!!) Those with a high school diploma have a rate slightly higher, and those without a high school diploma have a rate of 11 percent. Is this the result of a president not creating jobs, or a result of a bad economy shedding manufacturing jobs that will never, ever come back?
2)Baby Boomers who lose their jobs aren’t looking for another job because they are about to retire in a few more years. That’s hardly a sign that the president is not creating jobs—more like a sign of time times. The 2008 crisis just accelerated what was already going to happen.
3)The true measure (and what ultimately predicts a prez victory) is not the nearly meaningless and overly complex unemployment number. Rather, it’s the stock market. That’s the number we need to be focused on. And oh, by the way: It’s solid. Very solid.
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