Blog 6: Unemployment Rate Drops for September

Neil Irwin's article was on the recent report from the Labor Department for this past months unemployment rate. The report was issued this Friday morning stating that unemployment has dipped to 7.8%, the lowest it has been since January 2009. "Employers reported creating 114,000 jobs in September, almost identical to analysts’ forecasts, but revisions to data from July and August brought improvement of that measure of the job market as well." These revisions in the data are a result from a divergence in household surveys (which reflect unemployment rates) and employer surveys (which reflect payroll numbers.) When this happens, it either means American households are reporting higher gains than the employers, or it implies there is an increase in business start-up and self-employment. The revisions resulted in an increase of 86,000 jobs, totaling 146,000 new jobs in the last three months. After the debates on Wednesday, this improvement came just in time for the upcoming elections, and in a rally at George Mason University President Obama said, "This morning we found out the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level since I took office." This will surely boost the Obama campaign in a positive way, but too much remains to be done to celebrate over a 7.8% unemployment rate. Mitt Romney issued a statement on his view of the situation; "We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July, and we've lost over 600,000 manufacturing jobs since President Obama took office". He also went on to say that the growth pace doesn't reflect how a real recovery looks like. However, consumer confidence indices point out that faith is being restored in the job market.

A question comes to mind when I think of the Department of Labor, who is the Secretary? The Secretary is Hilda L. Solis (D-CA), she was appointed by President Obama back in 2009. One can't help but think if its possible that maybe the recent reports were "revised" so that it could make Obama look better just before election time. September reports just before election day are always spotlighted, but one more report will be issued just in time for November 6th.