By Daniel Gross, Slate.com
December 7, 2009
It's important not to make too much out of a single economic data point. But Friday's monthly jobs report may be even better news than it seems. The unemployment rate fell to 10 percent in November, and companies shed only 11,000 payroll jobs in the month. That was much better than economists expected and was the smallest such drop since late 2007—and perhaps early indication that, as I've argued, we'll be seeing jobs growth sooner rather than later.
A look inside the report—and, again, with the caveat that it would be folly to draw too strong a conclusion from a single month's data—suggests four other reasons to be optimistic.
1. The trend is your friend. Yes, the payroll jobs number in November came in much better than expected. In each monthly report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also revises the previously reported job totals for the prior two months. And in the past few months, the trend has been that the government overstates the job market's weakness in the just-completed month. In the original release for September, the government concluded the economy shed 263,000 jobs that month. A month later, however, in its October release, September's loss was revised down to 219,000. According to last Friday's release, the September job loss was actually only 139,000. The government originally said the economy lost 190,000 jobs in October, but Friday's report cut that number to only 111,000 jobs. The upshot: For the past three months, the government's first take at job loss figures has been understating the strength of the recovery. Should this trend continue, it's quite likely that when the November numbers are revised over the next two months, that 11,000 loss could turn into a gain.
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