Payroll employment increases by 321,000 in November; unemployment rate unchanged at 5.8%

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Sat Dec 6, 2014, 03:06 PM - Edit history (4)

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

USDL-14-2184

Transmission of material in this release is embargoed until 8:30 a.m. (EST) Friday, December 5, 2014

Technical information:
Household data: [phone] • [e-mail] • www.bls.gov/cps
Establishment data: [phone] • [e-mail] • www.bls.gov/ces

Media contact: [phone] • [e-mail]


THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- NOVEMBER 2014


Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 321,000 in November, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.8 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains were widespread, led by growth in professional and business services, retail trade, health care, and manufacturing.

Household Survey Data

In November, the unemployment rate held at 5.8 percent, and the number of unemployed persons was little changed at 9.1 million. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by 1.2 percentage points and 1.7 million, respectively. (See table A-1.)
....

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 2.8 million in November. These individuals accounted for 30.7 percent of the unemployed. Over the past 12 months, the number of long-term unemployed declined by 1.2 million. (See table A-12.) ... The civilian labor force participation rate held at 62.8 percent in November and has been essentially unchanged since April. The employment-population ratio, at 59.2 percent, was unchanged in November but is up by 0.6 percentage point over the year. (See table A-1.)
....

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised from +256,000 to +271,000, and the change for October was revised from +214,000 to +243,000. With these revisions, employment gains in September and October combined were 44,000 more than previously reported.

Read more: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

---

November Jobs Report: Everything You Need to Know

8:00 AM
Dec 5, 2014 ET
Markets

By Paul Vigna

Yes, it was that time again, folks. Jobs Friday, when for one ever-so-brief moment the interests of Wall Street, Washington and Main Street are all aligned on one thing: jobs.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to report that the economy added 230,000 jobs in November, that’s the consensus of economists polled by The Wall Street Journal. The unemployment is expected to remain static at 5.8%.

Here at MoneyBeat HQ, we are crunching the numbers, tracking the markets and will be compiling the commentary before and after the data cross the wires. Feel free to weigh in yourself via the comments section. And while you’re here, why don’t you sign up to follow us on Twitter.

- Associated Press

At DU, the workers get the credit. Meet the people behind the scene:

The MoneyBeat Team:

Stephen Grocer
Editor

Phillipa Leighton-Jones
European Editor

Erik Holm
Deputy Editor

Maureen Farrell
Reporter, New York

Paul Vigna
Reporter, New York

Steven Russolillo
Reporter, New York

David Cottle
Reporter, London

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Good morning, Freepers and DUers alike. I especially welcome our good friends from across the aisle. You're paying for this information too, so you are a welcome participant in this thread. Please, everyone, put aside your differences long enough to digest the information. After that, you can engage in your usual donnybrook.

If you don't have the time to study the report thoroughly, here is the news in a nutshell:

Commissioner's Statement on The Employment Situation

I'll briefly step in to note that the BLS number, 321,000, is way over The Wall Street Journal.'s estimate, which was 230,000. ADP®'s estimate, released two days ago, was 208,000. Someone's got some 'splainin' to do.

Back to the boilerplate:

It is easy to find one paragraph, or one sentence, or one datum in this report that will support the most outlandish of conclusions, from "the sky is falling" to "we'll have blue skies, nothing but blue skies, from now on." Easy, but disingenuous.

Take the information in context. Consider not just this month’s data, but the trend. Let’s look at some earlier numbers:

Bureau of Labor Statistics, for employment in November 2014:

Payroll employment increases by 321,000 in November; unemployment rate unchanged at 5.8%

ADP® (Automatic Data Processing), for employment in November 2014:

ADP National Employment Report Shows 208,000 Jobs Added in November

Bureau of Labor Statistics, for employment in October 2014:

Payroll employment increases by 214,000 in October; unemployment rate edges down to 5.8%

ADP® (Automatic Data Processing), for employment in October 2014:

ADP National Employment Report Shows 230,000 Jobs Added in October

Bureau of Labor Statistics, for employment in September 2014:

Payroll employment increases by 248,000 in September; unemployment rate declines to 5.9%

ADP® (Automatic Data Processing), for employment in September 2014:

ADP National Employment Report Shows 213,000 Jobs Added in September

Bureau of Labor Statistics, for employment in August 2014 (hat tip, Garion 55):

Payroll employment increases in August (+142,000); unemployment rate changes little (6.1%)

ADP® (Automatic Data Processing), for employment in August 2014:

ADP National Employment Report Shows 204,000 Jobs Added in August

Bureau of Labor Statistics, for employment in July 2014:

Payroll employment increases in July (+209,000); unemployment rate changes little (6.2%)

ADP® (Automatic Data Processing), for employment in July 2014:

ADP National Employment Report Shows 218,000 Jobs Added in July

Here’s a grim thought:

Fed economists: America’s missing workers are not coming back

Let’s follow that with another grim thought:

Why wage growth disparity tells the story of America's half-formed economic recovery

By Chico Harlan November 21

WILMINGTON, Del. — Thomas Gray says he was fortunate coming out of the recession: He took a job in one of the nation’s fastest-growing industries, food services, preparing meals for 500 students in a Head Start cafeteria.

But after two years of work, his salary had not budged, so his mother came out of retirement and took a job at United Way. Four more years have passed, and Gray is skipping bills to manage his expenses. During that time, his salary has risen 58 cents, to $11.70 per hour. But after taking into account the rising price of goods and services — inflation — he has taken a 6 percent pay cut.
....

With unemployment down to 5.8 percent, the country’s half-formed recovery is often described with a convenient shorthand: We have jobs but little wage growth. But stagnancy is just an average, and for many Americans, the years since the financial crisis have pushed them farther from the line, according to a detailed analysis of government labor statistics by The Washington Post.
....

Among the winners in this climate: Older workers, women and those with finance and technology jobs. ... Among the losers: Part-timers, the young, men, and those in the health, retail and food industries.
....

Chico Harlan covers personal economics as part of The Post's financial team.
@chicoharlan
[e-mail]

Dissenters, take note:

A New Reason to Question the Official Unemployment Rate

David Leonhardt
AUG. 26, 2014

The Labor Department’s monthly jobs report has been the subject of some wacky conspiracy theories. None was wackier than the suggestion from Jack Welch, the former General Electric chief executive, that government statisticians were exaggerating job growth during President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Both Republican and Democratic economists dismissed those charges as silly.

But to call the people who compile the jobs report honest, nonpartisan civil servants is not to say that the jobs report is perfect. The report tries to estimate employment in a big country – and to do so quickly, to give policy makers, business executives and everyone else a sense of how the economy is performing. It’s a tough task.

And it has become tougher, because Americans are less willing to respond to surveys than they used to be.

A new academic paper suggests that the unemployment rate appears to have become less accurate over the last two decades, in part because of this rise in nonresponse. In particular, there seems to have been an increase in the number of people who once would have qualified as officially unemployed and today are considered out of the labor force, neither working nor looking for work.

== == ==

A few more things:

Meet FRED, every wonk’s secret weapon

FRED stands for Federal Reserve Economic Data. It serves as an online clearinghouse for a wealth of numbers: unemployment rates, prices of goods, GDP and CPI, things common and obscure. Today, FRED is more than a little bit famous, thanks to the public’s fascination with economic data.

Federal Reserve Economic Data

And:

So how many jobs must be created every month to have an effect on the unemployment rate? There's an app for that:

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Jobs Calculator™

Well, enough of that. On with the show.

Monthly Employment Reports

The large print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.

A DU'er pointed out several months ago that, if I'm going to post the link to the press release, I should include the link to all the tables that provide additional ways of examining the data. Specifically, I should post a link to Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization. Table A-15 includes those who are not considered unemployed, on the grounds that they have become discouraged about the prospects of finding a job and have given up looking. Here are those links.

Employment Situation

Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization

From the February 10, 2011, DOL Newsletter:

Take Three

Secretary Solis answers three questions about how the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates unemployment rates.

How does BLS determine the unemployment rate and the number of jobs that were added each month?

BLS uses two different surveys to get these numbers. The household survey, or Current Population Survey (CPS), involves asking people, from about 60,000 households, a series of questions to assess each person in the household's activities including work and searching for work. Their responses give us the unemployment rate. The establishment survey, or Current Employment Statistics (CES), surveys 140,000 employers about how many people they have on their payrolls. These results determine the number of jobs being added or lost.

[Lucky Luciano]

1. Incredible numbers!

The USD is ripping!!! Bonds getting smashed!

[yellowcanine]

2. Job killing Obamacare strikes again! Oh wait....

Nevermind.

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. Funny how, as a person with two years of a four year degree...

In a wealthy and gentrifying liberal "Blue" city that is classed as one of the most economically unequal and socially destructive cities in the country, I can't find a job because I've been told I'm not eligible for a white collar job until I get that piece of paper.

[whatthehey]

6. Why is that funny

It's neither new nor strange that businesses want to make sure people entering their professional ranks have demonstrated at a basic level that they are able to follow a structured path of independently completing assigned work to an acceptable level. While it's undeniably true that schools do a very variable job of establishing this, this would be nothing compared to the complexity and variability of each company trying to find a way to verify for itself that people are capable of understanding instructions, completing assignments, and organizing a coherent response to given information.

If you want to avoid having to have that piece of paper to get into the white collar jobs, fight like hell for strict regulations on high schools graduating barely literate people completely unsuitable for similar professional jobs. But not everybody is, or should be, or wants to be, in the white collar pool so there has to be some stage-gate that separates those two groups. If you make it high school by applying rigorous criteria for graduation, you create a huge underclass who lack even the most basic academic credential. If you make it a degree, you create an expensive obstacle for aspiring white collar workers. You can seek another standardized shibboleth, but the last thing you would want to do if you value employee freedom is leave it up to each individual company to set its own standards, tests and credentials.

[Leopolds Ghost]

22. Your response sounds pretty callous, considering majority of people can't afford a four-year degree

It's neither new nor strange that the majority of people can't afford the type of bullshit miseducation that passes for COLLEGE schooling in America, where you can be in the top of your class one year and still be forced out if you don't do well in a single required field that causes you to lose your needs-based scholarship, while upper-middle-class twits drink and rape their way through law school.

I help manage a nonprofit business and I can't afford to go back to school without the business I help run going OUT of business. One of the reasons I got into it was hoping to demonstrate to my college that they should want to have me back, only to discover that they have no interest -- they regard me as a dropout and they expect most of their students, 99% of whom are very affluent, to go off and start their own NGOs. Right now I'm actually trying to invest in a community project in order to cobble together enough of a consulting fee that I can apply to go back to get a professional degree. They'll probably insist I go back for 5 years instead of 3, discounting my prior schooling even though it was at one of the best schools in the country (which prides itself on a 50% dropout rate, btw).

[Skittles]

24. read Robert Reich to understand

you need a college degree now to get jobs that don't really require them

http://robertreich.org/post/103472733520

and I've worked with many college grads who could not follow instructions or write a decent sentence!

[Purveyor]

11. Take a white collar temp job that will get you in the door at companies that

normally wouldn't even interview you. Demonstrate your abilities and if you excel at what you do, that piece of paper won't matter as much and you will most likely get hired on permanently while still completing your degree.

I entered the field of litigation support/discovery management consulting with just that scenario. Never did finish my degree, Consulting kept me too busy...

Good luck!

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. Thanks! Yeah, I am trying to take that approach. n/t

[NickB79]

27. Yep. A temp agency was the only way I could get in, WITH a 4-yr degree

Oftentimes, they'll want experience to back up your degree, but if no one gives you a chance you can't earn that experience, so you get stuck.

[Adrahil]

19. Why not finish the degree?

Many companies want to see you have what it takes to stick to it and complete the degree. And it's not like they have a tough time finding people who qualify. Why not do it?

[Leopolds Ghost]

21. Because I can't afford it.

And the profession I'm into doesn't respect people at the student or intern level. I keep running into urban planning professionals who say I know more than some people working for them and then when they hear I don't have a degree in the field yet, they say "oh well, you'll never get a job in the field without that degree" because technology has rendered most white collar jobs in the field obsolete. Plus, elitist attitudes (white collar liberals in my town have gotten really quite conservative -- they'd kind of chuckle at "our local activist" if I told them I attended, say, an Eric Garner march) mean that doing blue collar work to get by actually hurts my chances -- schools have told me that none of my work to date, including nonprofit work, does anything to help me get into a good school since all it proves is that I'm "wasting my time" trying to help the community instead of carefully cultivating a pristine white-collar resume and advancing my career -- volunteer work and blue-collar work is utterly devalued and leaves you unable to move between the classes because you have an "incompatible resume" if you have too much blue-collar or white-collar work on your job. Construction people regard me as "over-qualified" (meaning white, don't speak spanish, will probably be a complainer and ask for too much pay -- even a good friend of mine who's hispanic told me this when I asked him for a job -- even though another hispanic employer said he was surprised I was a hard worker but still insisted I had no place in construction if I wanted to go back into white collar work -- plus the first gentleman actually got into construction because he was similarly forced to abandon his white-collar career because his engineering degree was not considered good enough in this country.)

[Adrahil]

30. I'd say you can't afford NOT to have it.

I am in engineering, and I will say that many companies (mine included) require a degree from an ABET-accredited university, OR an EIT or PE qualification. Most companies will accept the EIT or PE, since it is a standardized certification exam.

I sympathize with being in a field that demands credentials, since as you observe, I am in one. But if you choose that route, there is definitely a game to be played, and you either play, or choose another career path.

It makes no sense to me to decry the situation in your case. Either find a way to get the degree, or rethink your career path.

IMHO, I think post-secondary education should be free for qualified students, but we ain't there yet, I'm afraid.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. Thanks for posting!

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. Thanks for the thanks.

I was afraid I'd miss it this morning. I missed the bus, and when I got to work, they were having an impromptu security check.

This is the highlight of the month for me.

Enjoy, one and all.

[bhikkhu]

7. Slow, steady improvement is best, I've said since 2009

- a better and more solid foundation. These numbers are more of the same. Its very good that so many millions of jobs have been created since 2009, but the one thing I've been waiting to see (as has everyone else) is the rise in wages that should correspond to a tightening labor market. Maybe next year?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. "... the one thing I've been waiting to see (as has everyone else) is the rise in wages...."

They were up too:

Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 9 cents to $24.66 in November. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 2.1 percent. In November, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 4 cents to $20.74. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)

[whatthehey]

8. Many thanks for all the work, and a nod to the oft-ignored A-16

A-16 is the best place to look to counter doomer myths about the labor force. For example much sound and fury is expended on the CLFPR. There is a small amount of merit in this, as there are certainly some demographics and labor segments where discouragement is understandable to say the least. If I were a 55+ job-hopping semi-skilled maintenance worker with a felony record and health issues I personally would still be looking and thus counted as a labor force participant, but I'd more than understand people who wouldn't in that case.

But that's not, by a country mile, the norm for those not in the labor force. Of the 92.5MM people who are the 37.2% of the theoretical labor force which are neither employed nor actively looking, only 6.2MM even theoretically want a job. Backing into the larger workforce number, that means even in a world where acceptable jobs magically appeared at will, the labor force participation rate would only be 2.5% higher at 65.3%.

Now 6.2MM is a lot of people, but the idea that the feasible GOAL for CLFPR is some number massively higher than it currently is is absurd. 86.3/92.5 non-labor force adults want to be non-working adults, be they retired, stay at home partners, in school, wealthy or shiftless.

Similarly we see that the standard-bearer for those who want to play Chicken Little, the harrassed multi-jobber desperately cobbling together unaligned PT schedules, total 3.5MM, which includes both jobs PT, both jobs FT and hours variable categories. These represent 2.4% of working people. A further 4MM or 2.7% of the workforce have a primary FT and secondary PT job.

Yes these are tough circumstances; I've been in every one of them, often several times. No I am not inured to the fact that 6 and 7 million people are huge numbers of my fellow citizens living tough lives. I sincerely wish they didn't have to, and know that this job market is not even approaching ideal (dull-witted thinkers always seem to assume those who try to show we are not in Hell must think we are in Heaven). But all too often here we are beaten down that we should acknowledge that those 2.5% or those 3.5% are the norm and they are simply NOT the norm.

93.3% of adults outside the labor force WANT to be nonworking.
94.9% of workers have one job

[mahatmakanejeeves]

10. Thanks again for the thanks.

There is so much information released at one time. I'd include more paragraphs in my quoted material if I could.

I really get a kick out of doing these every month.

Best wishes.

[okaawhatever]

16. Thanks for the reality check. I too am frustrated by those who cling to the narrative that the

2.5-3.5% of workers are the norm when they are anything but. Being in a recovering economy doesn't mean the economy has recovered, only that it is on its way.

[Mad-in-Mo]

12. Do these numbers include

the seasonal jobs that are filled just for the holidays? I'm betting most of these jobs will disappear in January. Hoping I'm wrong about that.

[whatthehey]

15. they are seasonally adjusted. But non-adjusted numbers are BETTER

with UE at 5.5% (construction is already done in much of the country and tourism is down in winter). You can find the data at the links.

[SpankMe]

13. A roaring success for our president and Dem policies...

...and only 10 recs by 1115 hrs pacific on 12-5-14. People must be asleep today.

[Kingofalldems]

14. Obama is a Communist Muslim.

[okaawhatever]

17. Thanks for taking the time to put this together. Very informative. nt

[quadrature]

18. full-time employment going down.. endless bad news... nt

[progree]

25. 2.5 million more full-time workers over the past year, 8.7 million more since Feb. 2010

Some key numbers from the Household Survey. See below, and see Table A-1 for the main Household Survey numbers - http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm

Over the last year:
+1,113,000 Labor Force
+2,844,000 Employed
-1,731,000 Unemployed
+0.6% Employment-To-Population Ratio aka Employment Rate
-0.2% LFPR (Labor Force Participation rate)
-1.2% Unemployment rate
-1.7% U-6 unemployment rate
-873,000 Part-Time Workers who want Full-Time Jobs (Table A-8's Part-Time For Economic Reasons)
+309,000 Part-Time Workers (Table A-9)
+2,531,000 Full-Time Workers (Table A-9)


Part-Time Workers Who Want Full Time Jobs, as % of All Employed
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"]Nov'13 Aug'14 Oct'14 Nov'14
[div style="display:inline; font-size:1.37em; font-family:monospace; white-space:pre;"]5.3% 5.0% 4.8% 4.7%


Since the Payroll Job Recovery Began -- Last 57 months thru Nov 30, 2014: 11'14 - 2'10:
(This is the period from when continuous growth of payroll employment began, thru November 30, 2014)
+2,677,000 Labor Force
+8,688,000 Employed
-6,011,000 Unemployed
+0.7% Employment-To-Population Ratio aka Employment Rate
-2.1% LFPR (Labor Force Participation rate)
-4.0% Unemployment rate
-5.6% U-6 unemployment rate
-2,054,000 Part-Time Workers who want Full-Time Jobs (Table A-8's Part-Time For Economic Reasons)
+142,000 Part-Time Workers (Table A-9)
+8,695,000 Full-Time Workers (Table A-9)
+1.65% INFLATION ADJUSTED Weekly Earnings of Production and Non-Supervisory Workers ( CES0500000031 )
......... the weekly earnings percentage is thru October 2014 because no data for Nov yet

vv-- numbers in my sig line will be updated sometime Saturday

[mahatmakanejeeves]

28. Thank you, progree, for citing the "household survey," aka the Current Population Survey (CPS).

It and the "establishment survey," aka the Current Employment Statistics (CES), are the sources for the data.

From the February 10, 2011, DOL Newsletter:

Take Three

Secretary Solis answers three questions about how the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates unemployment rates.

How does BLS determine the unemployment rate and the number of jobs that were added each month?

BLS uses two different surveys to get these numbers. The household survey, or Current Population Survey (CPS), involves asking people, from about 60,000 households, a series of questions to assess each person in the household's activities including work and searching for work. Their responses give us the unemployment rate. The establishment survey, or Current Employment Statistics (CES), surveys 140,000 employers about how many people they have on their payrolls. These results determine the number of jobs being added or lost.

[progree]

31. And thank you for almost always being the first one to post the jobs report in LBN

every month. I'm always glad to see your jobs report on the front page's Latest Breaking News.

As you no doubt know, but for others who might read this, the Establishment Survey -- which produces the payroll jobs numbers (and the hourly and weekly earnings) -- is the gold standard as far as net new jobs created. It is a much more reliable figure than the Household Survey's "Employed" figure. {1}

But the Household survey is, as you say, the (only) source of the unemployment rate, and other key numbers that are often discussed, such as the Labor Force and the Labor Force Participation Rate, the less-discussed (but to me more important Employment-To-Population ratio), part-time and full-time workers, and the U-6 unemployment rate (what some call the underemployment rate -- that counts jobless people as unemployed if they looked for work sometime, even if only once, in the past *year*, plus part-timers wanting full time work).

But because the Household Survey is incredibly volatile from month to month due mostly to statistical noise, I also include the over-the-past year and the since-the-jobs-recovery-began numbers (beginning March 2010) to give a longer term perspective that is also less corrupted by the month-to-month statistical noise.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

{1} On statistical noise, I found this BLS technical note on sampling error -- http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm . Based on what it says, there is a 90% probability that the payroll jobs increase is within +/- 90,000 jobs of the stated number. And a 10% chance that it is off by more than 90,000.

And in the Household Survey, there is a 90% chance that the monthly unemployment change is +/- 300,000 of the stated number, and that there is a 90% chance that the unemployment rate is about +/- 0.2% of the stated number.

The above only covers sampling error. There are also many other sources of error (search the above link for "non-sampling error&quot

The individual components that go into these numbers have an even larger sampling error. As explained above, right-wingers love to find the aberrant statistic or two of the month and make it out to be the story of the Obama administration, rather than what it really is -- just one month's number in a very statistically volatile data series.

vv-- numbers in my sig line will be updated sometime Saturday

[SidDithers]

20. DU rec...nt

Sid

[IronLionZion]

26. This is because the job creating GOP took over Congress

and saved us from those job killing socialists!



2014 has been the best jobs year since 1999.

[ancianita]

29. Question: what is the relationship between the permanently unemployed and offshore job creation?

My hunch is that a good chunk of jobs offshored are what the permanently unemployed used to do.

Also, thank you for all the good info here. Much appreciated.

[progree]

32. Part-time jobs vs. Full-Time jobs - incredible graph

Last edited Mon Dec 8, 2014, 12:58 PM - Edit history (1)

From: What's Behind November's Remarkable Job Surge?, The Atlantic, 12/5/14
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/obama-november-jobs-report-economy-added-321000-recovery/383471/

[font color = red]On Edit:[/font] Thanks mahatmakanejeeves! who supplied me with a .jpg URL of the graphic, and the more direct source for the Atlantic article. Changes made above.