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Good call on the economic calendar, very interesting.
If I could ask for just a little more clarification for what is confusing me.
If there are 100,000 more jobs than there were last month, how can less people have jobs when we just said that there are 100,000 positions that didn't exist last month.
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first off, unemployment (like i mentioned above) just (imperfectly) measured the % of the labor force that have jobs.
the labor force can change for a ton of reasons.
visit
www.bls.gov and go to unemployment rate to see how it is exactly calculated.
it takes into account discouraged workers (i forget the real term) and drops them out. i.e. if you have stopped looking for a job b/c you couldn't find one you are "not in the labor force"
that may be innaccurate but it is close enough.
basically, just know the UE rate is not a perfect measure. it is like a capacity measure that helps to tell whether we are near the point at which any additional growth will likely be inflationary (like capacity utilization).
to more directly answer your question, there aren't "100k more jobs than there were last month" there are "100k more jobs filled than were filled last month"
so right now, more people have jobs than had jobs last month (yet more people filed for first time unemployment benefits than they did last week/month than expected).
i hope this helps. let me know if i didn't answer your Q.
Barron
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Followed your link to the BLS site, I see that the employment report is a sample-based estimate. I’m not a math guy but I’m guessing that their error rate would have to be very small. With the statistical sampling based on a labor force of 153,000,000 and they state 104,000 is statistically significant, what would their error rate be?
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you mean what is their sampling error?
if so then you'd need the standard deviation of the sample (which, i don't know). at lesat if you get it, then you can be comfortable with it since in these types of questions (jobs added), the sampling distribution can be treated comfortably as normal (i.e. one or a few massively outlying observations won't change the average that much).
further, what useful information would this sampling error give you?
and why does it matter?
i mean the # of jobs added every month is a bls estimate, sure, but i'd give them the benefit of the doubt that it is reasonably precise ...
Barron
EDIT: i just reread your question and i may not be answering it. was the 104k the jobs added/month #? because to relate that to the "labor force of 153,000,000" you'd also need the change in labor force (i.e. how much has unemployment changed on net from 1 month to the next).
typcially it is reported as a level rate rather than a change. i.e. 4.7% unemployment vs. a X% change in unemployment (since it would be a rate of change of a rate...like GDP). for labor statistics, i think most like to think in levels and rates rather than rates of change. i don't know though and i'm just trying to get at what you really what to know....
i'm just babbling at this point. can you rephrase your question in context so i know what you want to know and how you want to use it?