Did you know we actually LOST 252,000 full time jobs in April?

[econoclast]

Its true.

Thats right. The Household Survey - the same data set used to calculate the Unemployment Rate also reports on the number of Full Time jobs.

The data series is Employed -Usually Work Full Time.

The number of Full Time jobs declined from a level of 121,024,000 in March to 120,772,000 in April. A LOSS of 252,000 Full Time jobs.

In fact, the number of full time jobs peaked in Nov 2007 at 121,875,000. Thats right. We have yet to regain the number of full time jobs we had over seven years ago! We are over 1.1 MILLION jobs short of where we were in 2007. And there are 17 million more people now than there were then.

Don't believe me? You can look it up. I'd recommend the St Louis Fed's FRED data library website. Look for data series - LNS12500000

[Octafish]

1. Here in Detroit, a lot of us old folks are working three and four jobs.

All part-time, but hey! It's a servitude.

[djean111]

2. But, but - there will be "up to" 10,000 new jobs from Nike. Over 10 years, I believe.

the TPP will save us all!

[Puzzledtraveller]

3. Sshh...

You will intrude on the fantasies of some people here.

[whatthehey]

4. Explain U6 and U6-U3?

[tritsofme]

5. From the BLS:

U-1, persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force;
U-2, job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force;
U-3, total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (this is the definition used for the official unemployment rate);
U-4, total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers;
U-5, total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers; and
U-6, total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.

Definitions for the economic characteristics underlying the three broader measures of labor underutilization are worth mentioning here. Discouraged workers (U-4, U-5, and U-6 measures) are persons who are not in the labor force, want and are available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They are not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the prior 4 weeks, for the specific reason that they believed no jobs were available for them. The marginally attached (U-5 and U-6 measures) are a group that includes discouraged workers. The criteria for the marginally attached are the same as for discouraged workers, with the exception that any reason could have been cited for the lack of job search in the prior 4 weeks. Persons employed part time for economic reasons (U-6 measure) are those working less than 35 hours per week who want to work full time, are available to do so, and gave an economic reason (their hours had been cut back or they were unable to find a full-time job) for working part time. These individuals are sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers.

[TheProgressive]

6. Is this loss due to people retiring?

[econoclast]

7. People are retiring

But they aren't dead. They atill eat, drive, watch movies, turn in the lights etc living their lives. Who is doing the jobs needed to provide them that stuff? Who is doing the job they left? And population has grown by 17 million.

[TheProgressive]

9. There are plenty of people looking for work. The problem is...

...thru Reaganomics, Clinton's NAFTA and other free trade deals, and blunt corporate greed, 50,000 factories have been closed down and moved overseas. Millions of jobs left America because of that.

The biggest problem is that America doesn't make/produce anything anymore. Manufacturing is how a nation becomes wealthy.

So, to answer your question, 'who is doing the job they left?' - nobody...because American corporations could careless about the American worker...

[winter is coming]

8. I wish we had a statistic tracking the number of people with full-time, living wage jobs. n/t

[econoclast]

10. Good luck

Employed-Usually Work Full Time is the closest I know. At least a full time gig there's the chance that you can build a life around it. Part time ... Probably not

[progree]

11. Full-time workers up 1,265,000 over last 5 months (253,000/month average)

Did you make a big HOO-HAH when fulltime workers went up by 552,000 in September, 427,000 in December, and 777,000 in January, for example?

Monthly changes in full-time workers (in thousands): http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12500000
` ` `` Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun July Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2014) 410 209 203 396 332 -538 196 310 552 371 -174 427
2015) 777 123 190 -252



Note this is a highly volatile data series, as are most of the Household Survey numbers (in other words, most of the month to month changes is statistical noise)

I talk about this on my EF-0 page under the topic "Highlighting the adverse one-month or other short-term changes in some highly volatile component, and making it seem like it's the story of the whole Obama administration's job record. Also known as cherry-picking the bad statistic of the month

Should we perhaps look over the past 12 months:

-880,000 Part-Time Workers who want Full-Time Jobs (Table A-8's Part-Time For Economic Reasons)
+487,000 Part-Time Workers (Table A-9)
+2,314,000 Full-Time Workers (Table A-9)

Or since the jobs recovery began in March 2010?
-2,356,000 Part-Time Workers who want Full-Time Jobs (Table A-8's Part-Time For Economic Reasons)
+111,000 Part-Time Workers (Table A-9)
+9,994,000 Full-Time Workers (Table A-9)
(so much for the meme that all the new jobs are part-time)

[progree]

12. If we want to get back to Nov 2007, maybe we should elect Jeb Bush. Or Scott Walker?

and get back to the good ol' rah rah boom boom days when we had a white man in the White House? [font color = "gray", size = 1]{sarcasm thingy just to be sure}[/font]

We lost 252,000 full-time jobs in April
In fact, the number of full time jobs peaked in Nov 2007 at 121,875,000. Thats right. We have yet to regain the number of full time jobs we had over seven years ago! We are over 1.1 MILLION jobs short of where we were in 2007. And there are 17 million more people now than there were then.
BLS full-time worker data series: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12500000
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026642259

Yes, most of the economic statistics suck when compared to the peak in 2007. This is one of the classical polemicist tricks (from my EF-0 page at my sigline)

(5). Comparing the current statistics to 2007's statistics, as if 2007 was a normal economy we should get back to - I see this all the time. Yes, today's economic statistics just about across the board suck compared to 2007's. But keep in mind that 2007 was not a normal economy. It was a very sick bubble economy with a very high fever -- people using their houses as ATMs to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Anybody could get a mortgage, virtually no questions asked. The belief that housing prices never go down, at least not on a national average scale (thus the theory that a geographically diversified bundle of mortgages was always a safe bet).

The same for comparisons to 2000 -- that too was a very sick economy -- astronomical price/earnings ratios in the stock market, day trading and momentum investing. The belief that Alan Greenspan had mastered the "Goldilocks" economy (not too cool, not too warm) and that, now that we understood how to use the Fed's powers to control the economy, we will never have a recession again. That tech companies with huge negative earnings and no business plan were great investments. That we were all going to the moon, and we were all going to the stars (speaking of the economy and the stock market).

Well, I'm extremely very sorry. But we don't want to get back to the very sick high-fever bubble economies of 2000 or 2007.