Also, what kind of jobs? Low unemployment should create wage pressures and yet wages have been stagnant. So... those new jobs are probably not all that desirable.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I think that job reporting should be proportional based on the base-line poverty level versus salary. A job only earns 50% of the base-line poverty rate? Then add it as 0.5 of a job.

Jobs that earn more than the base-line poverty level should be reported still as a 1.

Of course it wouldn't be perfect. No one wants to just earn only the base-line poverty rate, especially since it's still not adequate in most cases to provide material stability.

Still, I think it would give a more even playing field with the numbers. 

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I'm with the jobless recovery. I'm still broke, but I started a business. Unemployment only lasts 6 months, and then you have to get a job at Wal-Mart or somewhere fun like Best Buy AND Circuit City to nearly replace your real job, now outsourced or offshored or just plain busted. All that college book learnin' went toiletward like the dollar.

I bet most job growth was in the cash part of the contracting economy, which industry was only growing due to the high-stakes Wall St.-financed loan rackets, the Republican base. It's all been a scam. Profits are up, but the economy has been in the toilet since our contested 2000 election.

We hired a million TSA screeners, narcs, spies and mercenaries to pad Bush's jobs record, and we're still stagnant.

I don't think the 'President' knows how many people there are, certainly doesn't believe they all count. How can you expect the numbers to add up?

I've witnessed some of that "recovery" in my own family. My stepson lost a job where he had some seniority, reasonably decent health insurance, decent pay, etc. Because the economy was on the upswing (you could have fooled me), he was lucky enough to find another one, in the same line of business, within a couple of months. But. At a 30% pay cut (entry-level), worse retirement plan, less health insurance *and* with a much longer commute (4hrs round trip instead of less than 2).

Since divorce soon followed his "recovered" work-plan, he's now supporting two households (the ex-wife and children stayed in their house and he's renting. Close by, because of the children, so the commute is still long).

Faux-Noise has had a poll recently about whether people are praying for Bush and, apparently, a surprising number of Democrats do. I don't find the number surprising at all. I'm an *atheist* and I pray for Bush daily. It's called "an imprecatory prayer"

Thanks for the kind words, aMike.

First, take heart in that revisions of that magnitude are pretty rare.  It seems to have had something to do with difficulty counting public school teachers.  The BLS initially got incomplete data from the schools and it appeared they were laying off 32,000.  When they got more complete data, it looked like they were adding 39,000, which explains most of the revision.

I think you're right that it had something to do with August, and perhaps wine coolers were also involved...

Thanks for the link. We are red-lining, and the graphics should reflect that. But I think I'm smart, so as a Democrat I have to bicker with your point, with which I agree.

I'm not sure this liberalism is the same, so maybe the blues we use should be sky blue and blue-jeans indigo. When WWII ended, people didn't want war and were used to working together. The smaller, more focused political wars that followed created more segments. The economy grew and we all got very busy, and government work became less lustrous as other jobs became available.

As the baby boom settled, all the free time and baseline prosperity inspired an idealism in the active and vocal minority and lent momentum to minority-rights advocates, anti-war, pro-education, labor/management stuff, etc.

Then the government sent a half-million young people to the other side of the planet to keep the road free of obstacles to southeast Asian oil, zinc, rubber. That was before China, offshoring, special work visas for better-educated and more compliant Indian tech workers, etc.

I hope today's liberal lean has more to do with the way this administration pulled out a string of late-game cold war losses as China underwrites our economy, Cuba enjoys an apparent peaceful commie succession, Russia steps on the throat of European energy supplies, Bolivia, Venezuela and others in Reagan's precious Latin America turn pink, the US dollar is worth less than the Canadian dollar, the intensely stratified income demographics, the Vice President's war profiterring and religious indoctrination posing as accredited education. Welfare-to-work was probably good, but the flip side is government-subsidised business.

I hope it is apparent that the business-only representation philosophy on the R side turned out to be baseless and harmful.

Or maybe it's just me.

Teachers come back every year, unlike Spring and Autumn. The dog ate his homework. Those jobs weren't created this year.

That's a neat idea.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty color blind, so I'd probably mess it up.  Maybe I'll get my kid to help me...

As I point out in my report on the jobs report from last Fri (first link), you're right--job growth of this magnitude is too slow to keep the jobless rate from rising.  We need upwards of 100K, closer to 150,000/month, to absorb the growing population/labor force. 

And while unemployment is still relatively low, it is rising.  September's rate of 4.7% is the highest in since August of last year.