If jobs were created, then why did the unemployment numbers go up?

[Robin Hood]

Something smells fishy here, and the republican media machine is all a glow with news of 300,000 jobs created last month, but write off the unemployment number going up. THey don't even talk about the employment number anymore.

Either the numbers are being cooked or maybe someone here can clue me in to something that I may not understand with this picture. I am going to bed but will check on this post in the morning, Thank you for any input.

[Shoedogg]

1. Check this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=114&topic_id=7596

[mhr]

2. Because Discouraged Job Seekers Were Added Back To Unemployed Number

Once an unemployed person loses unemployment benefits and then stops looking they are no longer deemed to be looking for work and are not counted.

The theory goes that as employment hiring rises the discouraged will return to a job search and this increases the unemployment rate.

The reason this happens is simple. In a normal economy one would not see the number of discouraged job seekers grow substantially. So as the economy contracted and expanded the rate of job loss and job creation would be nearly equal.

This has not happened in this downturn and we are now severely out of balance.

[MadProphetMargin]

3. More proof that the BLS is full of crap. Unemployment figures should

reflect the ACTUAL unemployment numbers.

This is what happens when you allow an organization to write its own report card.

[ClintonTyree]

4. Not to mention.................

that it takes approx. 340,000 jobs a month to break even with those leaving the job market. By that benchmark there was another net loss of jobs in the past month. For some reason this fact goes unreported month after month. I wonder why? Hmmmmmmmmmmm...........

[SheilaT]

5. I believe the 300,000 plus

new jobs are exactly that: new jobs. No mention of how many people were laid off in the same period of time. If no one lost a job in that month, then we're still behind, or perhaps just exactly breaking even in keeping up with new entrants to the labor force.

But probably a hundred thousand or so jobs were lost, so we're falling farther and farther behind.

It can take a little digging to understand exactly what is going on in these kinds of reports.

[LynzM]

6. Yeah, new jobs...

90% of which are part-time, and a big chunk of those are people returning from strike in California or construction people returning from winter breaks. Not exactly new, IMO...

[leftofthedial]

7. the head-in-sand answer is

that more jobs means more people start looking again, so supply (job seekers) outstrips demand (jobs), even as the number of jobs increases. (Never mind that the statistics don't actually count people who just started looking for work and the presumed extra people don't start looking until they learn there are more jobs, which was just announced, so how could they already have been looking a month ago?)

The reality is the numbers are a propaganda lie, just like the chocolate ration in 1984. The bureaucrats and some economists would have you believe that the elaborate methodology behind the construction of this propaganda somehow lends it validity, but it is a lie.

Actual unemployment in the US is nearer 20%, if, deity forbid, you were to count the number of people without jobs and prorate the underemployed. We can't do that though, because the unvarnished truth does not require high priests to conjure for us and is impossible to spin.