Comments for How Many Jobs Do We Need: Teaching Arithmetic To Economists at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 11 out of 11 comments http://www.cepr.net Sat, 25 May 2013 20:31:17 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12046 Nice job on explaining your labor force assumptions. As to the BLS and why they do what they do- they are beholden to statistics. Here is a link to how they actually calculate unemployment, including labor force. It is a project, and they do it every month. http://connectmooredata.com/2010/05/local-area-unemployment-system-laus-method/ - scott moore Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:07:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12042 1921-2003 Democratic presidents created 1,800,000 jobs per year to Republican 800,000. Carter + Clinton created 222,000 per month to 99,000 per month by Reagan + Bush I + Bush II Wealth creates jobs? Ha!Try Bush 8. - clarence swinney Tue, 11 Oct 2011 08:52:06 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12026 Dean: I think the monthly report which separates out those reading the BLS report and numbers versus reporters aping some number they got somewhere is the February release, with the January data. Since that's where the yearly population adjustments are. Your overall premise, that many reporters do not read the actual government reports has to be true from so many "headline buzz" articles that miss completely what the data actually implies. Not just on the unemployment report, but manufacturing, trade, CPI, you name it. What bothers me about the BLS is that yearly adjustment done on just December-January boundary, it makes no sense to me and why they don't go back over the monthlies and modify each month. Then, using the 2000 Census base for 11 years has to be putting in some bias, regardless of statistical algos for yearly adjustments. I think the Census/BLS should track immigration status too. What's wrong with just having some data in this globalization/labor arbitrage age? We have illegals, alphabet soup of NIVs (temporary foreign guest worker Visas) that are included in the employment statistics and it biases the numbers, esp. when looking at occupations. STEM, for example, is notorious, where NIVs are used to labor arbitrage, offshore outsource. Urban Legend: My point really is if one just looks at the monthly and takes an EPOP of 62.7%, that's the ratio for 2007 unemployment rates. If you take the current one, 58.2%, considering the "not in the labor force" has so dramatically increased, you hide the # of needed jobs by throwing people who just arrived, increased overall pop., into "not in the labor force". Also, considering the unemployment rate is based on the monthly Non-institutional population as shown in the report, is it more accurate to go with just the monthly increase and estimate "jobs needed" or the yearly? I get your use of yearly, esp. with that large end of year adjustment, plus the 2000 Census base being used, on the other hand, the report is deriviing ratios and unemployment rates and so on from the monthly number, exclusively. To sum: Sure I want a better press corp., although it would kill my hobby here, but what I really want is more precise, detailed and accurate labor statistics and part of the reason we can't get it, is Congress, funding, politics. - Robert Oak Mon, 10 Oct 2011 08:47:54 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12019 Why assume EPOP of 63%?mptame Keeping up with non-institutional 16+ population growth at any given time merely means applying the EPOP at that time. Right now, it's just a little over 58%. - urban legend Sun, 09 Oct 2011 19:06:58 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12018 Robert, I was looking at the estimate of population growth over the last year, but if we want to just take a shorter period we can look at 3-month interval I was using as the basis for comparison. (I would argue that annual projections are somewhat more accurate than the projection for any specific month, but we could ignore than for now.) BLS projected that the non-institutionalized population grew by 582,000 between June and September or 194,000 a month. Assuming an EPOP of 63 percent, we should expect to see employment growth of 122,000 a month. Roughly 6.0 percent of these would be self-employed, leaving payroll growth of just under 115,000 a month. Of course there are confidence intervals around these numbers, but there are also confidence intervals around the budget numbers. The latter are huge and never ever reported, why would we make a big point of reporting anything other than the central estimate with the labor market data? - Dean Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:20:59 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12017 It's simply old data that was roughly correct before 2010. Since then, that population growth rate has dropped precipitously, as has the employment-to-population ratio. 85 or 90K is the better estimate now, and 135-150K is outdated info suitable for lazy reporters. - urban legend Sun, 09 Oct 2011 16:49:33 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12012 Why not talk about the margin of error? The reality is there is a 100k monthly margin of error on payrolls, CPS is 400k. I did an overview on that [url]http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/under-hood-employment-report-household-survey [/url] Having monthly non-farm payrolls below the margin of error, 4 of the last 5 months, is scary as hell to me. Sorry on previous comment,no spell check in IE forms, non-institutional. - Robert Oak Sun, 09 Oct 2011 10:13:10 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12010 I think they are "doing math", just not your math. If one takes civilian non-institutional population growth from Jan 2010 to Dec. 2010, one gets 2,057 million increase. Divide by 12 is 171.42k per month. Take Dec 2007 civilian non-institutional populationt to employment ratio, 62.7%, one gets 107.47 jobs. Take the monthly reported increase in non-institional civilian population for September 2011, you get 200k. Take that times 62.7%, you get 125.4k jobs needed to keep up with population growth. I have no idea why you harp on this each month. It's completely dependent upon civilian non-institional population estimates, which frankly vary way too widely for my tastes. The fact is the BLS does an annual adjustment, but only between Dec-Jan, instead of averaged out going back for that year. This mon-mon adjustment that's really for the year throws off the base non-institional civilian population number, depending which start and end data point (date) one uses. We have not even gotten to age categories, such as the massive influx of immigrants below age 30, or people working longer or baby boombers. I personally never give an absolute number on the number of jobs needd each month and then declare "this is the number". I show a few calculations and give ranges, estimates. Really, all hell is going to break loose for January 2012, when finally, the 2010 Census data is incorporated, now that should create a slew of fictional press reports complete with bad math and where the real fun will start. - Robert Oak Sun, 09 Oct 2011 09:53:27 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12009 Part of the problem with the housing bubble was the economists who knew that it was likely to burst one day, but (unlike Dean) didn't take the trouble to say so very often. Too busy talking about whatever more emotive issues were occupying their followers at the time. And their followers, without adequate data about where things were going (which could have been partially remedied by a little education and a few dozen big graphs) were easily distracted by emotive issues. And now many people are putting all the blame for our troubles on Wall Street, which admittedly deserves a great deal of blame. And so they neglect the role of the health care system in damaging the economy. And all the while the various interest groups are pressuring Congress to produce new health plans, all likely to inflict needless pain on our fellow citizens. And the citizens, without the necessary knowledge (or even basic graphs), certainly short of adequate leadership, can do nothing. - Rachel Sun, 09 Oct 2011 06:55:10 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12007 I'm afraid economists got their 150,000 number from the same place they get most of the rest of their ideas: from groupthink. - Sandwichman Sun, 09 Oct 2011 06:35:57 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-many-jobs-do-we-need-teaching-arithmetic-to-economists#comment-12006 [quote]One of the numbers that frequently in appears in discussions on the state of the economy is the number of jobs that we need to keep pace with the growth of the labor force.[/quote] Any economist knows demand creates supply. Supply does not create demand. The labor force doesn't just arrive on the scene and demand the number of jobs necessary to keep it fully employed. If that was the case large families would get more income than small ones, spurring a perverse incentive to increase the labor force even more until it implodes from massive unemployment. Arithmetic indeed. For it to add up reverse the question and ask how much labor is necessary to satisfy the existing level of demand. Don't count job entitlement chickens before they hatch which only creates an unnecessary labor surplus falsely labled as 'unemployment' via those willing to work but can't find it. Let chicken demand come first and egg supply will follow to maintain an organically balanced equilibrium free of surpluses and shortages. Stupid liberals. - izzatzo Sun, 09 Oct 2011 05:39:32 +0100