From Bloomberg.com:


Now I do NOT believe all of these workers were fired!!!  Bad reporting, as many quit and were laid off, I am sure!!

OK, so what is going on here?  The New York Times reports:

Coupled with revisions to September’s data — which now show a loss of 284,000 jobs, down from an initial estimate of 159,000 — the economy has shed 1.2 million jobs since the beginning of the year. More than half the job losses have been in the last three months alone.

The point is that revisions are ALWAYS made to OUR employment reports (other reports too) so DO NOT USE the numbers as ABSOLUTE values but rather as indicators of the direction and possible magnitudes.  Now while Bloomberg's report of 25,000 more jobless in September is almost 10% higher than previously reported, the New York Times says 125,000!!! Oops!  I guess Bloomberg's reporter forgot a "1" as in 125,000 - which means a 78.6% (125,000/159,000) revision UPWARDS!!!  How can the Labor Department miss SO MANY unemployed workers in September??  Furthermore, the data are AGAIN revised, so for August we have the next paragraph (from Bloomberg.com):

Job losses for August and September were revised up by 179,000. The economy has lost 1.18 million jobs so far this year.

Now you can see why I started scrambling for better information - 25,000 alteration in September and 179,000 in two months!??  Something doesn't seem to add up because USUALLY our first revision (Sept. revision of August) would be BETTER not WORSE!!!!  Laughing!  Now you can see why I don't just read ONE newspaper and then go to the full report!  (Next post)

OK - now to the picture.  The usual employment picture from the NYT (I love this graphic they do):

          
The data are so nicely displayed for us to make our OWN conclusions.  We needn't rely on reporters only!!!

So the part-time workers who WANT a full time job is up 52% year over year!!!  There's the true value of seeing the numbers!!  These "workers" are NOT considered unemployed (see the next post) because they ARE working.  That is, they are not considered unemployed in the number used by newspapers and politicians - the 6.5% does not include that they are unemployed as they are working part-time.

Furthermore, median duration of unemployment is up almost 22% (year over year) - the average unemployed worker is out of work for over 3 months.

One further comment before I get a bit technical in the next post, there are two (2) reports included in the above picture.  One is a household survey, the unemployment rate statistics, the other is non-farm payroll, a survey of business payrolls.

Finally, I DO love Bloomberg.com's sources as they get the actual CEOs and leaders like this:

“The evidence is more than compelling'' that a recession is under way, :S:d1">Robert Hall, who heads the National Bureau of Economic Research's panel that dates economic cycles, said in an interview following the jobs report. “It's conclusive, in my personal opinion.'' Hall is an economics professor at Stanford University.

You can't get a better source than the economics professor who dates recessions.  If Robert Hall says there is a recession, we have a recession underway!

Update: Bloomberg.com's reporters HAVE now updated the numbers!