
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
The jobless rate dropped to 7.8 percent, the lowest level since President Obama took office.
Where do the "jobs" numbers come from and what's this conspiracy about? Here is some background on how the whole process works.
I loved this the first time The New York Times published it — a simple explanation about the super-secret process of reporting the nation's Employment Situation Summary, a.k.a. the "Jobs Report" and the "Unemployment Rate" from the bureau of labor and statistics. The cloak and dagger method in detail is below.
Read it and you will have something to say when your friends start quoting Jack Welch and Rep. Allen West who are among a host of conservatives that are starting conspiracy theories that the 7.8 percent jobs number for September is some politically-timed conspiracy meant to help President Obama's re-election campaign.
Rep. Allen West tweeted:
In regards to today's Jobs report — I agree with former GE CEO Jack Welch, Chicago style politics is at work here...
Well, who are the people tabulating the numbers? TPM asked.
Betsey Stevenson, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Obama, said in a phone interview with TPM that the conspiracy theories were misguided in just about every way possible. For starters, the Bureau of Labor Statistics isn’t currently run by a political appointee. For most of Obama’s term, the commissioner was a holdover appointed by President Bush. The current acting commissioner John Gavin is a career BLS economist, not an Obama appointee.
And where do the actual numbers come from? I found this simplified version here.
•The unemployment rate is derived from telephone survey of households; respondents are asked about their employment situation and whether they are looking for a job. (Unemployed who are no longer looking aren't counted in this number)
•The jobs report is derived from a larger survey of businesses owners who report their hiring activity for the month.
•That's why the unemployment rate could decline, as it did in April, at the same time employers reported a net 3,100 job losses
Now for the fun stuff, If you want to know the secret process, continue reading.
From The New York Times:
Wednesday (the prior week), 12 p.m.
Office suites in the Bureau of Labor Statistics go into lockdown. Custodial service is suspended.
Wednesday (the prior week), 12 p.m.
By the end of the week, the Census Bureau transfers household data to the B.L.S. Data experts spend the next few days turning lines of code into publication-quality tables.
Monday afternoon
An economist takes a first pass at the household data and drafts one half of the report.
Tuesday afternoon
A second economist analyzes business data and drafts the other half of the report.
Wednesday, 8:30 a.m.
The economists submit their drafts to a supervisor and a fact checker.
Thursday, 8:30 a.m.
The associate commissioner, division chiefs, branch chiefs and analysts sit around a table and “go through every single line,” says Abraham Mosisa, a bureau economist, “every single word, including commas.
Thursday, 11 a.m.
A committee of senior staff members does a final review.
Thursday afternoon
The report is sent to the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Friday, 8 a.m.
A group of financial journalists is taken into a locked room in the Department of Labor. The writers hand over their cellphones and are given 30 minutes to review an advance copy.
Friday 8:28 a.m.
Television journalists are given a two-minute window to get in front of the cameras and prepare for broadcast.
Friday 8:30 a.m.
Precisely at 8:30, according to an atomic clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory, reporters broadcast the figures across the country at exactly the same time that the B.L.S. posts the report to its Web site.





You know whats missing from that ...An envelope with a self destructing tape and maybe the bat signal but that might be overdoing it a little
Again the sole focus on JOB CREATION continues without addressing the growing non-human component of producing our products and services––productive capital––in terms of financing its formation so that we broaden private, individual ownership and Americans are able to over time build a viable capital estate that generates income in addition to or in place of wages and salaries.
In the final analysis, JOB OPPORTUNITIES for the majority of Americans is headed to a dead end due to tectonic shifts in the technologies of production, which are destroying and degrading jobs.
The Federal Reserve is dragging with in-action. There is no question that the Federal Reserve System needs to be reformed to act as a purveyor of economic growth. The focus should be on OWNERSHIP CREATION, which will result in real JOB CREATION as a result of future economic growth.
Influential economists and business leaders, as well as political leaders, should read Harold Moulton's The Formation Of Capital, in which he argues that it makes no sense to finance new productive capital out of past savings. Instead, economic growth should be financed out of future earnings (savings), and provide that every citizen become an owner.
The Federal Reserve, which has been largely responsible for the powerlessness of most American citizens, should set an example for all the central banks in the world. Chairman Benjamin Bernanke and other members of the Federal Reserve need to wake-up and implement Section 13 paragraph 2, which directs the Federal Reserve to create credit for local banks to make loans where there isn't enough savings in the system to finance economic growth. We should not destroy the Federal Reserve or make it a political extension of the Treasury Department, but instead reform it so that the American citizens in each of the 12 Federal Reserve Regions become the owners. The result will be that money power will flow from the bottom up, not from the top down––not for consumer credit, not for credit that doesn't pay for itself or non-productive uses of credit, but for credit for productive uses to expand the economy's rate of growth.
The systemic injustices of monopoly capitalism can only be addressed by comprehensive reforms to the tax, monetary and inheritance policies favoring the top 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent. The current system perpetuates budget deficits and unsustainable government debt, underutilized workers, a lack of financing for financing advanced energy and green technologies, and outsourcing of U.S. industrial jobs to low-wage countries, trade deficits, shrinking consumption incomes among the poor and middle class, and conventional methods for financing productive growth that increase the ownership and power gaps between the top 1 percent and the 90 percent whose combined ownership accumulations are already less than the elite whose money power is widely known as the source of political corruption and the breakdown of political democracy.
The unworkability of the traditional market economy is evidenced by the diverse and growing deficits––federal budget deficit, trade deficit, city, county and state budget deficits––which are making it increasingly impossible for governments at every level to function. The increasing deficit burden is the result of the growing numbers of people who cannot earn, from legitimate participation in production, enough income to support themselves and their families. Thus government is obliged to “redistribute” to starve off economic collapse. The key means of redistribution is taxation––taking from the legitimate producers and giving to the non- or under-producers––to make up the economy’s ever wider income and purchasing power shortfalls.
The fact is that political democracy is impossible without economic democracy. Those who control money control the laws that foster wage slavery, welfare slavery, debt slavery and charity slavery. These laws can and should be changed by the 99 percent and those among the 1 percent who are committed to a just and economically classless market economy, true equality of opportunity, and a level playing field in the future for 100 percent of Americans. By adopting economic policies and programs that acknowledge every citizen’s right to become a capital worker as well as a labor worker, the result will be an end to perpetual labor servitude and the liberation of people from progressive increments of subsistence toil and compulsive poverty as the 99 percent benefits from the rewards of productive capital-sourced income.
The question that requires an answer is now timely before us. It was first posed by binary economist Louis Kelso in the 1950s but has never been thoroughly discussed on the national stage. Nor has there been the proper education of our citizenry that addresses what economic justice is and what ownership is. Therefore, by ignoring such issues of economic justice and ownership, our leaders are ignoring the concentration of power through ownership of productive capital, with the result of denying the 99 percenters equal opportunity to become capital owners. The question, as posed by Kelso is: “how are all individuals to be adequately productive when a tiny minority (capital workers) produce a major share and the vast majority (labor workers), a minor share of total goods and service,” and thus, “how do we get from a world in which the most productive factor—physical capital—is owned by a handful of people, to a world where the same factor is owned by a majority—and ultimately 100 percent—of the consumers, while respecting all the constitutional rights of present capital owners?”
Two of the Bureau's economists responsible for this "October Surprise" report are listed as having provided sizable donations to the Obama reelction campaign, and it looks as if they just made another! Just sayin'!
Seems that the 60,000 Households surveyed reported enough new individuals employed and/or looking for work (the later category now that summer is over) for these economists to extrapolate 873,000 increase in employed individuals in the labor force for September, or best showing nationally since June of 1983 under the real and solid Reagan Recovery. Amazing that the failing all along Obama Administration has now out-shined the best month of employment in the last 30 years, better yet than anything Bill Clinton could produce.
Excuse me while I go look for my Vapo-Rub to block that really terrible smell coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics that reports go the Obama Labor Department political appointee Chairwoman.
Until you provide some unbiased verifiable proof of this statement of yours, I'll just consider it another Keith Longey lie.
And if you don't, you will have proved it's a lie for any and all to see.
Just sayin'...
Now...I have some ideas about places where you can stick that Vapo-Rub...wanna hear them?
Don't think the bureaucrats do the bidding of the boss of the moment? Take a gander at the chart put up by ABC's George Staphanopapous this AM that shows how the incumbent miraculously benefits from a sizable drop in the unemployment rate in the month before the election date in all elections since 1980, counting Geroge H.W. Bush in 1988 (Vice President) and All Gore in 2000 (Vice President) as incumbents, with the exception of 1992, when recession did in the political fortunes of George H.W. Bush, perhaps our last honest President.
That's still not proof of anything other than speculation, regardless of which party might espouse it. It must be a fact that you fail to easily assimilate, but that bump would happen for any president...as you said yourself, since Poppa Bush. Even Republican economists say what you're alleging isn't the case, but of course, the rabid Keith Longey knows better than they do. So if "administration influence" didn't happen under Bush 1, Clinton, and Bush 2, then why (magically) does it occur now? Another of your "pink unicorn" theories, perhaps? More likely you just can't tolerate any good news about the economy that deals with this administration.
Besides...something that happened TODAY won't support the lie you told YESTERDAY. Noted that you didn't offer any proof about those:
So why can't you just offer up some valid proof of your assertion? Could it be because you don't have any?
Prove me wrong...if you can, soprano-boy. Show the proof or have the words "Keith Longey" and "liar" be considered synonymous.
First of all, I didn't say the "bump" downward in the Unemployment rate didn't happen in the last month before the election for other incumbents, I stated it did, as the Charts displayed on the signature ABC Sunday News show demonstrated. You seem to have a problem with that, take it up with George Stephanapolos and ABC, certainly no right wingers. And as Clinton's former Chief of Staff, I'm sure George had an inkling on jut how the game is played over at the Department of Labor.
Secondly, they stretched it just as far as they could possible go, but its not enough to get your man past the truth that no incumbent has been reelected with an Unemployment rate over 7.2% since FDR...and your guy is certainly no FDR, fool. I suggest you get a towel and dry behing your ears before you come back to try to profess that the numbers of last month's Houshold Survey extropolation with seasonally adjusted factors applied are at all an accurate representation of the true employment and unemployment situation in this dormant economy.
Still...no proof or verifiable sources of what you said. Tsk, tsk, tsk...you seem to have a problem producing anything that would support your blustering. I think that "synonymous" factor you earned and so richly deserve just went up...again. But it ain't no big surprise.
As for the rest of your croaking, just more straw men of yours going up in smoke.
Perhaps when (chuckle, chuckle) you can offer up some viable proof of the skullduggery that you insist took place with the unemployment numbers...
Those two guys on the Progressive Insurance commercials who lie about what their company offers while their pants go up in flames as they're wearing them...they remind me much of you.
No mas pantalones, Keith...
really..really..on all comments and stories on this channel and site. are you better off! do you realize we are going to war with every country soon. do you realize we owe china trillions and and are forgiving billions from Muslim countries. do you see the end game? really do you think or believe a cool and hip guy, but no clue on leading(your man got killed) A u.s. ambassador....can lead us to greatness. 7.8% unemployment. Just a joke..lie after lie.. i feel sorry for you. really. if you don`t like your parents that is OK., then think about your children...they will be speaking a different language soon. OMG..sorry to insult you..hope you got that..
wow......i never thought,,ever i would let someone else think for me...Will you
Wow, don't like others to think for you. I don't like it when others take my income in taxes thinking they can spend it better than I can.
I know in my heart that in the future, people will look at Obama as one of the greatest president we ever had. Its a shame so many people are duped by the Republicans. Its almost hard to believe that it happens, because they are so blatant in their actions, and make no effort to cover it up. They know eventually the masses will forget and they bank on it. And we go about like blind rats in a wheel, letting ourselves to be walked all over, robbed, treated like their slaves and we take it, because the masses have short term memory. Look at fracking going on in our nation right now by the oil companies . Anyone can look it up on U tube, a media by American everyday people.One third our entire nations water supply is permanently being destroyed as I write this.You think their would be a revolt over this horror, but you don't hear about it on the news. Oil companies have too much control, and Obama was the one who had the guts to talk about the horrors of lobbying, the republicans favorite play ground. Line their pockets and they will sell their mother. PEOPLE EDUCATE YOURSELVES. WE ARE LOSING OUR COUNTRY AND NOT A SHOT HAS BEEN FIRED.
"Line their pockets and they will sell their mother."
YOu must be taking about Obama, He took $884,000 from the oil and gas industry during the 2008 campaign, more than any other lawmaker except his Republican opponent.
President Obama, needs to make a conscious decision on how to prosecute this campaign and the strategy to use to promptly address it. Having realized how slippery and flip-flopping Governor Romney was during their famous debate, the late Senator Ted Kennedy went after pinning him down with a prosecuting approach by asking the Governor to account for how he would balance the budget through a bill in the senate . Romney is famous for lack of specificity, instead, he gave the same answer that Paul Ryan gave Mike Wallace of Fox News, that there was no enough time to step by step. We all know the answer that came from Teddy, "that is what we do with legislation"
Both the President and the Vice President should take this approach, they must pin both of them down, if necessary, the must watch the tape of the Mass Senate debate, Mike Wallace, George Stephanopoulos and some other where both of these guys have miserable failed to account for the or reasonably demonstrate a clear understanding of "arithmetic" as stated by President Clinton.
The winning tactic needs not to be newly developed, it has been put in templates for them, they just need to ensure that different template is accurately applied for effective results
Your argument would make more sense if it weren't for the history that Romney brings as one who did balance the budgets of his states as Governor wielding his veto powers to stop the runaway spending of the 87% Democrat controlled state legislature, and did it while knocking bsack a $3 billion plus defict when he took office, and leaving a $2 billion plus rainy day fund for his sucessor when he left. And then, recoginizing the runaway spending of both this President and his colleagues in control of both houses of Congress in his first two years, and the inability of this Administration and his friends in the Democrat controlled Senate to produce a budget for the previous three years.
As Governor of Massachusetts Romney's fiscally reponsible leadership resulted in a raising of the state's credit ratings; under Obama's federal lack of fiscally responsible leadership, our federal government has suffered two consecutive downgrades of its once pristine credit rating.
HELLO?