Payroll employment continues to edge up in June (+80,000); jobless rate unchanged (8.2%)

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- JUNE 2012


Nonfarm payroll employment continued to edge up in June (+80,000), and the
unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today. Professional and business services added jobs,
and employment in other major industries changed little over the month.

Household Survey Data

The number of unemployed persons (12.7 million) was essentially unchanged
in June, and the unemployment rate held at 8.2 percent. (See table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for blacks (14.4 percent)
edged up over the month, while the rates for adult men (7.8 percent),
adult women (7.4 percent), teenagers (23.7 percent), whites (7.4 percent),
and Hispanics (11.0 percent) showed little or no change. The jobless rate
for Asians was 6.3 percent in June (not seasonally adjusted), little changed
from a year earlier. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

In June, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks
and over) was essentially unchanged at 5.4 million. These individuals
accounted for 41.9 percent of the unemployed. (See table A-12.)

Read more: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

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Good morning, Freepers and DUers alike. I especially welcome viewers from across the aisle. You're paying for this information too, so you deserve to see this as much as anyone. I post the numbers every month, good or bad.

This time, they're bad. The increase in employment was only 80,000. That's a lot less than expected.

Of particular importance this morning is this article from today’s Wall Street Journal.

Unemployment Line Longer Than It Looks

AHEAD OF THE TAPE
Updated July 5, 2012, 7:26 p.m. ET

By SPENCER JAKAB

Here is a statistic for the politically inclined: No incumbent president has won re-election with an unemployment rate above 7.2% since the Great Depression.

Economists expect Friday's release of June employment data will show 95,000 new jobs added. Meantime, the unemployment rate is seen unchanged at 8.2%. That may be bittersweet or just plain bitter depending on one's political slant, but it is difficult to reconcile today's rate with past periods.

The headline unemployment rate has been flattered by the number of people no longer counted in the denominator used to calculate it. For example, a comparison of jobs data between the start and end of 2011 shows the ranks of the unemployed fell by 822,000 while the number of people not in the labor force grew by a larger 1.24 million. The unemployment rate fell by 0.6 percentage points over that time to 8.5%.

In fact, the participation rate—the share of the working-age population either working or looking for work—has fallen by 2.3 percentage points over the four years through May to 63.8%, a three-decade low. Nearly 88 million people—about seven times the ranks of the officially unemployed—aren't part of the headline rate's calculation.

Hmmm. Give that some thought. Also, when last month’s figures were released, Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation was on Tom Hartmann that Friday night. He kept referring to the "U-6 Number." That can be found in Table A15. It is "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force." It appears in two forms, seasonally adjusted and non-seasonally adjusted. Either way, it is the least optimistic of all the estimates.

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What is important about these statistics is not so much this month’s number, but the trend. So let’s look at some earlier numbers. We’ll start with the ADP estimate.

(Edited to fix the links, which worked the last time I did this, but not today.)

ADP, for employment in June:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/125152112
ADP jobs up 176,000 (for June)

BLS, for employment in May:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014133487
May payroll employment changes little (+69,000); jobless rate essentially unchanged (8.2%)

ADP, for employment in May:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014132307
May change in employment +133,000

BLS, for employment in April:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014113023
Payroll employment rises 115,000 in April; unemployment rate changes little (8.1%)

ADP and Gallup, for employment in April:

There were four related threads about the April jobs estimate at DU already. Three are in General Discussion, and they are based on the figures from ADP. The fourth, in LBN, paints a contrasting picture. It relies on the figures from Gallup.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002635553
Per CNBC - ADP Numbers bad (posted by Laura PourMeADrink)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002635507
BAD: ADP JOBS REPORT MISSES EXPECTATIONS BY A MILE (posted by xchrom)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002635837
ADP & TrimTabs Showing Much Weaker Payrolls Ahead of Unemployment Report (posted by marmar)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014111465
U.S. Job Creation Nears Four-Year High (posted by brooklynite)

There's a joke about economists in there somewhere.

March, BLS:

Payroll employment rises 120,000 in March; unemployment rate changes little (8.2%)
March, ADP:

Businesses Adding 209,000 New Jobs Last Month Fail To Ignite Market Rally

February, ADP:

ADP Estimates U.S. Companies Added 216,000 Jobs in February, posted by Gruntled Old Man.

Well, enough of that. On with the show.

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Monthly Employment Reports

The large print giveth, and the fine print taketh away.

A DU'er pointed out several months ago that, if I'm going to post the link to the press release, I should include the link to all the tables that provide additional ways of examining the data. Specifically, I should post a link to "Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization." Table A-15 includes those who are not considered unemployed, on the grounds that they have become discouraged about the prospects of finding a job and have given up looking. Here are those links.

Employment Situation

Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization

From the February 10, 2011, "DOL Newsletter":

Take Three

Secretary Solis answers three questions about how the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates unemployment rates.

How does BLS determine the unemployment rate and the number of jobs that were added each month?

BLS uses two different surveys to get these numbers. The "household survey," or Current Population Survey (CPS), involves asking people, from about 60,000 households, a series of questions to assess each person in the household's activities including work and searching for work. Their responses give us the unemployment rate. The "establishment survey," or Current Employment Statistics (CES), surveys 140,000 employers about how many people they have on their payrolls. These results determine the number of jobs being added or lost.