Why Immigation Must be Reduced
Current Employment Rate | UnemploymentData.com
As the article below shows, there are fewer jobs, and the ongoing massive influx of legal immigrants is exacerbating the unemployment situation, but we will not hear this from MSM touting the wonderful work our President has done on the jobs front. Unemployment may not budge, but remember there are people dropping out of the workforce or retiring early. And the liberalization of Social Security disability rules by the Obama administration helps keep unemployment down, no coincidence in my view that they did this.
Current Employment Rate Chart
How Many People are Actually Employed?
Updated 8/03/2012
By Tim McMahon, editor
In Europe they look at the employment rate. How many jobs are actually filled? A glass half full approach. Here in the U.S. we look at jobs from an Unemployment (glass half empty) viewpoint.
Yes, I admit that it is important to know what percentage of the population wants to work but can’t find a job. But the problem is the tracking. When the government tracks the unemployment rate the number is subject to all kinds of variations. Who is counted as unemployed etc. See What is U-6 Unemployment?
A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is the Current Employment Rate Chart on a monthly basis since the year 2000. Notice that the trend over the last few months has been generally upward (more jobs) but there was a sharp drop in July contrary to what the “Seasonally adjusted Unemployment Rate” would have you believe (seasonally adjusted rose while the unadjusted number fell by -1.2 million in July ) and we are still nowhere near the employment levels of 2007-2008 and the population has increased in the mean time.
*Total Non-Farm Employment Not Seasonally Adjusted Rate
Current Employment Commentary:
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics BLS) has released its preliminary estimates for the employment situation for the month of July 2012. They have also released their “Seasonally Adjusted” Unemployment numbers which stayed flat at 8.2% for both May and June but rose to 8.3% for July. The “Unadjusted Unemployment Rate” (U-3) rose from 7.9% in May to 8.6% in July. Lets look at the actual number of people with jobs from the table below we can see that Employment fell by -1.2 million jobs from June to July. Typically January and July are bad months so we will have to see how next month’s statistics go.
| Date |
Employment in Millions |
| Jan-2010 |
127.309 |
| Feb-2010 |
127.746 |
| Mar-2010 |
128.584 |
| Apr-2010 |
129.698 |
| May-2010 |
130.801 |
| Jun-2010 |
130.908 |
| Jul-2010 |
129.569 |
| Aug-2010 |
129.624 |
| Sep-2010 |
130.090 |
| Oct-2010 |
131.071 |
| Nov-2010 |
131.371 |
| Dec-2010 |
131.050 |
| Jan-2011 |
128.183 |
| Feb-2011 |
128.994 |
| Mar-2011 |
129.899 |
| Apr-2011 |
131.072 |
| May-2011 |
131.707 |
| Jun-2011 |
132.144 |
| Jul-2011 |
130.821 |
| Aug-2011 |
131.058 |
| Sep-2011 |
131.746 |
| Oct-2011 |
132.870 |
| Nov-2011 |
133.172 |
| Dec-2011 |
132.965 |
| Jan-2012 |
130.297 |
| Feb-2012 |
131.210 |
| Mar-2012 |
132.081 |
| Apr-2012 |
132.945 |
| May-2012 |
133.723 |
| Jun-2012 |
134.072 |
| Jul-2012 |
132.868 |
Seasonal Employment Changes
From the table above we can see that employment in July was 132,868,000 compared to 134,072,000 in June for a net monthly decrease of 1,200,000 jobs.
So where does our current 132.8 million jobs stand? It looks pretty good compared to 130 million in July 2011, until we look back at the end of 2011 and see that November 2011′s employment number was 133,172,000.
7.8 million More People, but 3.1 Million Fewer Jobs!
Employment Changes since November 2008
Back in November 2008 there were 136,000,000 people employed and there were 305,785,716 residents in the United States, but as I write this, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates there are currently 313,650,302 for a net increase of 7.8 million people! But 3.1 Million fewer jobs!
So yes employment is improving but probably not as much as the unemployment numbers would have you believe. And that doesn’t take into consideration population increases resulting in a larger pool of workers. With more workers, if the number of jobs stays the same but the population increases, the number of people without jobs (unemployed) will increase.
You might also be intrested in the article Is the Government Fudging Unemployment Numbers? where we compare unemployment numbers independantly collected by the Gallup polsters to the numbers the Bureau of Labor Statistics are feeding us. According to Gallup’s current unadjusted numbers the Unemployment rate is 8.2%.
Note: The Employment rate and the Unemployment rate are based on two entirely different surveys but theoretically they should be two sides of the same coin. If you look at the chart above it does look like the employment rate is climbing i.e. more people are getting jobs as the trend channel does seem to be up. Although we did see a slight drop in the number of jobs in December and a sharp drop in January compared to November. So what does that say about the supposed Christmas hiring if jobs actually decreased in December?
To determine the employment rate the U.S. government surveys 390,000 businesses nationwide every month. The raw number is what we use here and it is not seasonally adjusted. This number is considerably more reliable than the 60,000 households that they survey to obtain the unemployment rate. And I prefer it to the seasonally adjusted number. This survey is submitted by the businesses monthly based on company employment on the 12th of the month.
By looking at the employment rate we will know how many jobs there are in our economy, pure and simple. (As Detective Joe Friday in Dragnet would say, “Just the facts Ma’am”). Are there more jobs than last year? Good! Are there fewer jobs than last year? Not good. Simple as that! There is of course the population factor. If the number of jobs stays the same but the population increases drastically then the unemployment rate will rise even though the number of jobs stayed the same. So looking at the unemployment rate is also important. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t give us the full picture. If the U.S. population is growing (and it is) but the number of jobs only holds steady the number of people without jobs will increase. So in order for the real unemployment rate to stay the same the number of jobs has to increase at at least the same rate as the population. If the number of jobs increases at anything less than that rate the unemployment rate will be increasing.
See Current Unemployment Rate for an explanation of how the government calculates the official Unemployment rate.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics- Current Employment Rate Data
