"January Jobs Number: Beware! It Might Not Be True," the caption read at the bottom of the screen on CNBC's February 1 "Street Signs."
The number of payroll jobs declined for the first time in more than four years on February 1, but "Street Signs" host Erin Burnett explained, this jobs report might not be as bad as it has been reported elsewhere - like today's story posted on CBSNews.com - "U.S. Economy Suffers Another Body Blow."
"[T]here's a system out there where basically what happens is the government makes some assumptions about how many jobs are created or lost every month," Burnett explained. "How many businesses are created - they can't check it every single month, so they have to make some assumptions. It turns out if you look out over history they always do the ‘businesses dying estimate' in the month of January - as a matter of fact, always in the month of January."
According to the U.S. Labor Department, payroll jobs fell by 17,000 in January after an 82,000 gain in December. But January is traditionally a disappointment. Burnett pointed to historical data to demonstrate this trend.
"Last year [2007] they assumed 193,000 jobs were lost in January," Burnett said. "The year before [2006] - 280,000. The year before [2005] 321,000. The year before [2004] 211,000. Now, it just puts today's number in context since we did see an unexpected drop in jobs., the first overall drop that this economy had registered in four-and-a-half years."
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→ Erin Burnett
February 1, 2008 - 18:15 ET by Cool ArrowMaybe Ms. Burnett is echoing Bill Clinton's call 2 days ago to slow down the economy.
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Is That a Wig?
February 1, 2008 - 18:31 ET by third eye"[T]here's a system out there where basically what happens is the
government makes some assumptions about how many jobs are created or
lost every month," Burnett explained. "How many businesses are created
- they can't check it every single month, so they have to make some
assumptions. It turns out if you look out over history they always do
the ‘businesses dying estimate' in the month of January - as a matter
of fact, always in the month of January."
If #4 keeps it up and ignores everything Jim Cramer tells her, I might just have to re-write my Team CNBC spring 2008 roster.
The guy who sat in for Rush today...
February 1, 2008 - 19:54 ET by NavyBuckeyemade a good point about this. He said that the entire number is for government jobs. The private sector still grew in its numbers. He said in his morning stroll through the news not a single one mentioned this little fact. Also if I remember right the government had to let people go because Congress was fighting over the funding bill.
As a conservative I can interpret these numbers as good news now. If it was only government jobs then 17.000 people are free to now go work in the private sector and government shrunk today.
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter” - Thomas Jefferson