NEW SEPTEMBER JOB REPORT ISSUED TODAY

According to the latest Job Report issued by the Dept. of Labor, even economists who had been predicting a relatively poor showing in the job market were woefully disappointed. In the U.S. each month, the economy needs to produce 200,000-250,000 new jobs just to keep pace with the number of new workers entering the job market. Economists have been predicting each month for the last five months job creation numbers of about 150,000. The market has exceeded that number significantly only once since January of this year. For the month of September, the government reports that only 96,000 jobs were created. Certainly one should expect that number to be revised upwards as new information continues to be collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics; however, one should not expect it to exceed the 150,000 mark, nor should one expect the total to even approach the 250,000 mark I mentioned above. For a complete summary of the numbers, see the Bureau of Labor Statistics news release. Notice that the initial narrative attempts to spin the numbers so that it seems the labor force has grown steadily in a productive way, averaging 103,000 jobs added per month in the last three months. While it is true that the number of jobs does continue to increase, these are not significant enough to keep up with the number of new workers entering the workforce!