So new forum but same topic. So BLS report came out:
164,000 jobs created. Which is fine. We’re at full employment so it’s going to get increasingly harder to have giant numbers. Up from last month. Revised monthly numbers for February and March added 30,000 so that’s good. Unemployment rate down a tad to 3.9. Labor participation rate down a tad. Payroll increase of 4 cents. Which is meh. But overall seems like a fine report for how the economy is doing. We’re a little shy of 200,000 per month so far this year. I doubt it’ll stay that high. Full employment.
I would assume so. You have to remember that jobs number is not related to the unemployment rate. They are separate. That had to be explained about 800 million times on the old forum when people were claiming fixed numbers when the unemployment rate kept dropping under Obama.
I do remember the monthly !?!?!? threads under Obama, and how the numbers were a sham, and anemic, and the books were cooked, and PARTICIPATION RATE, etc.
And the numbers are suddenly legitimate. No more crowing about the U6 vs. U3, or REAL UNEMPLOYMENT (which our current president was doing before he was elected).
We are now at 91 consecutive months in which the US economy has added jobs. This streak started in October of 2010 and is by far the longest stretch of US jobs gains in recorded history.
We are approaching 8 years without a down month! Do you think we will make it to 8 complete years of consecutive jobs gains?
No The participation rate has no direct affect on the UE rate. The participation rate is Labor Force/Population, while the UE rate is Unemployed/Labor Force.
So what did happen for April was that the Labor Force went down a little bit while the population increased, causing the participation rate to go down. At the same time, the number of unemployed went down by a larger percent than the Labor Force, so the UE rate went down.
Honestly, none of the changes were statistically significant as the margin of error for the change in the UE rate i(and the participation rate) s +/- 0.2 percentage points at the 90% confidence level.