and the priior two months were revised to show 140k less jobs lost...the unemployment rate may still move up to ~10.5% over the next few months as people come back into the workforce, but the trend in job growth/loss is good.
Now, how the number of jobs can decrease and the unemployment rate can decrease at the same time?
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States Department of Labor (
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm) here is how its done:
What you do is decrease the “civilian labor force” off of which you base your U-3 unemployment rate. You do this by increasing the number of people “not in the labor force.”
So, even though the “Employment-population ratio” is unchanged (well, actually slightly worse in the “Seasonally adjusted” numbers), you have statistically reduced the unemployment rate, while the number of unemployed increases!
For this statistical sleight of hand to work, it is important to make sure the reader doesn’t check the U-1 measure of persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, which actually went up from 5.7 to 5.9%
Now, some analysts (like
U.S. News & World Report) will note that:
The report doesn't match up with other jobs data: Today's report will no doubt be a head scratcher for economists as they try to understand how other labor market data could be so divergent. Earlier in the week, ADP reported private payroll losses of 169,000 for November. The Monster Employment Index, which measures online job demand, actually dipped slightly from October's number. "This was a shocking report because the reported payroll data bear little resemblance to any other evidence concerning the labor market, including the ADP survey, which is based on hard data from a much wider sample of payrolls than is the government's survey," says Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at research firm MFR.
