A couple of days before the presidential election in the United States, the Labor Department released the jobs report for October. It immediately became the hot topic in the campaign trail. There were claims that the recent employment numbers were manipulated. People have been asking what the real score of employment in the nation is.
The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics releases Employment Situation Report every month. It contains information from various databases. The two vital databases are the A tables and the B tables.
A tables are also known as the household survey and come from monthly survey of 50,000 individuals. The results are extrapolated to the population of the United States. Statistical perturbations and twists can happen with the data.
According to the B tables for the month of October, from January 2009 to October 2012, non-government non-institutional population grew by around 9.2 million people. At the same time, civilian labor force grew by 1.4 million. These include those employed as well as those looking for jobs. The United States needed to add around 6 million jobs to keep up with the population growth.
With the given numbers, people expect the unemployment rate to increase but the unemployment rate declined. This was because the percentage of the population who are employed or looking for work dropped. 5 million people just gave up looking for work. These individuals are not considered unemployed and not part of the labor force.
In March 2007, the United States experienced peak employment. The US population increased by 13 million since then. To be at pace with the population growth, the nation should have added around 8.6 million jobs but employment declined 3 million during the period. That means the US needs to generate around 12 million jobs.
