Jobs

"Figures don't lie, but liars do figure." -- Mark Twain

"Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes? -- Chico Marx

   News item: The U.S. unemployment rate dipped to 7.7 percent as the nation added 265,00 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported. On Wall Street, investors celebrated the news by driving the indexes up even higher.
   However, the size of the labor force fell by 130,000 as workers retired or gave up looking for jobs. And the labor force participation rate -- the proportion of people actually working -- dropped to 63.5 percent, a low point. And the austerity ravens are still cawing for cutbacks in spending, meaning fewer jobs in government, including White House tour guides, air traffic controllers, teachers, police and firefighters.
   So is this news of an economic recovery, or a sign that stock gamblers (sorry, I mean speculators) are gaming the system? Many players tout what can be seen as good news to push sales, and others are only too eager to snatch up grains of potential good news in hopes of scoring a win as they buy low and sell high.


   Consider: These are monthly numbers, with a high degree of volatility. Moreover, the statistics are largely based on sampling surveys, which are not known for strict accuracy (check your old textbook on Statistics 101). The payroll survey -- the number of people actually working -- can be reasonably accurate, because companies report the hard number of workers hired. And the population survey counts the number of people of working age, except those in prison, in school or in the military. But the unemployment number comes from a telephone survey, sampling just a few of the many households in America. It tracks the number of people out of work, able to work and actually looking for work. Calculating the unemployment rate takes numbers from two different surveys, one reasonably accurate and another not so much so. The result is, at best, a reasonable guesstimate and useful largely in a long-term context.
   A more practical number is the labor force participation rate, which tracks the number of people actually holding jobs compared to the total population. This number, however, doesn't have the emotional stab that "unemployed" has. Movers, shakers and those who play on the hopes and dreams of others -- advertisers, marketers, sales folk and stock market pitchmen -- much prefer emotional numbers.


   In other news, law schools are opening clinics so their graduates -- unemployed and deep in debt -- can get at least some legal experience helping others who can't normally afford lawyers. And the city of Camden, NJ, once home to RCA Victor, Campbell's Soup Co. and a prospering shipyard, is now one of the poorest, most dangerous cities in America, just across the Delaware River from wealthy, prosperous Philadelphia (which itself has crime and poverty problems in many neighborhoods).

   So Wall Street thrives as Main Street struggles. Does it have to be this way?