From the Nate Beeler archive at the Washington Times.

There were also some big upward revisions to previously reported payrolls data as the December job gain total of 203,000 was raised to 223,000 and January’s total of 243,000 now stands at 284,000.

The number of Americans the Labor Department counts as unemployed held steady at 12.8 million, though a broader measure of underemployment that includes discouraged workers and those settling for part-time work now stands at 23.5 million as the U-6 measure of underutilization fell from 15.1 percent to 14.9 percent.

Overall, the U.S. unemployment rate has dropped 0.8 percentage point since August, however, further improvement will face two strong headwinds – the impact of more unemployed workers actively seeking work (and, as a result, being “counted” as unemployed) and unfavorable seasonal factors after an unusually warm winter.

The labor force participation rate rose from 63.7 percent in January to 63.9 percent in February, a sign that more workers are seeking work and finding it.

Private sector payrolls grew by 233,000 last month with huge job gains in professional and business services (+82,000) and education and health care (+71,000) as shown below. More than half of the gains in professional and business services came from temporary help (+45,200), a category that is often considered a leading indicator for the labor market as a whole.

Impressive job gains were also seen in the leisure and hospitality sector (+44,000) as hiring at food service and drinking establishments (+40,500) no doubt benefited from the unseasonably warm winter weather.

Hiring in manufacturing continues to be strong (+31,000) and government payrolls declined yet again, the Federal government shedding the most jobs (-7,000) while there were mixed results at the state (-1,000) and local (+2,000) levels.

As I’ve reported before, the 2.689 million job loss turned into a gain of 243,000 only because Labor’s seasonal adjustment programs expected the job losses to be bigger. The warm winter weather probably kept some people from being put out of work, and this threw off Washington’s calculations.

Will that same thing happen with tomorrow’s number?

That isn’t likely. Yes, the weather has remained warm. But Labor’s computers are expecting undoctored, not seasonally adjusted growth of more than 800,000 jobs in February.

So there’s less chance that the seasonal adjustments will be pleasantly surprising.

And February isn’t one of those months in which Washington includes a huge guesstimate for jobs added by companies it thinks, but can’t prove, were just started. This so-called Birth/Death Model has been the biggest contributor to job growth — bogus job growth — over the past few years.

Also, John has spotted a link between Tuesday’s stock market dive and Wednesday’s story about the Fed’s latest thinking on the next round of money printing:

Even though one Fed official last week told investors to stop depending on “morphine” from the central bank, the cry for another version of quantitative easing went out less than 24 hours after the Dow Jones industrial average fell 203 points on Tuesday.

Why not give Wall Street what it wants?

Because the Fed’s money-printing operation is leading to higher commodities prices. And as thrilled as I would be to bail Wall Street out again, can’t we at least wait until it really needs our help?

That’s a good question (the second one, that is).

The differences between the adjusted/unadjusted and Gallup/BLS data are all rather complicated, but, one thing seems certain – the jobless rate as reported by the Labor Department is not going to go down again from its level of 8.3 percent in January. It could jump just a few tenths of a percentage point or to as high as 9 percent.

From the Mike Thomson archive at the Detroit Free Press.

At the far end of the politicization spectrum are those who believe the government cooks up the numbers in some dark corner of the Labor Department basement. It’s as if these folks decreed, “There shalt be no good news as long as Obama is president, the federal government is expanding and the Federal Reserve is printing money and debasing the dollar.”

I have a message for them. It’s not the data that are politicized. It’s the interpretation.

Friday’s report inspired an outpouring of accusations of “fraudulent employment statistics” and long screeds on updated population estimates from bloggers (ZeroHedge and the Economic Collapse) and editorial writers (the Washington Times) alike.

The household survey for January incorporated new information from Census 2010. Previous months were unrevised. Simply put, there is a December/January break in all the series that rely on the new estimates.

If the December data had been updated for the population- control effect, the civilian non-institutional population would have increased 175,000 in January, a typical month-to-month change, not the 1.7 million without the adjustment.

The composition of the population changed, as well. Conspiracy theorists seized on the 1.2 million increase in those “not in the labor force.” Adjusted for an apples-to-apples comparison, the number fell by 75,000 in January. That’s because the population increase was concentrated in persons 55 and over and in the 16-24 year-old age bracket: a population less likely to be in the labor force than the general population. (Tables B and C on Page 7 of the Employment Report outline these effects.)

My impression has always been that the conspiracy theorists are somewhat apolitical – or at least apolitical when compared to the many political types that only dabble in economics and finance. Of course, I could be wrong.

The Job Creation Index above is calculated by subtracting the percentage of employers who said they were more likely to let workers go from the percentage of employers more likely to hire and, in the case of North Dakota, those numbers were 8 percent and 42 percent respectively. Rhode Island had the lowest score of any state with just +4.

Perhaps more interesting than the above graphic is the well-being portion of Gallup’s State of the States survey, those of us living in the north central part of the country apparently a little better off when considering such factors as obesity, exercise, and diabetes.

North Dakota does pretty well on this measure too, ranking third behind Hawaii and Wyoming, though things don’t look too good in the rustbelt and the south (except for Georgia, for some reason), while Nevada stands alone as below average in the West.

This data release included benchmark revisions for prior data, the net result being an upward revision of more than 250,000 to nonfarm payrolls in recent years. Payrolls for 2011 alone were revised upward by 180,000, from a gain of 1.64 million to 1.82 million.

The unemployment rate has now fallen 0.8 percentage points since August as the number of jobless fell from 13.1 million in December to 12.8 million in January and the labor force participation rate was unchanged at 63.7 percent.

The broader U-6 measure of underemployment, include those who have given up looking for a job or have settled for part time work, fell from 15.2 percent to 15.1 percent.

Job growth was seen in all major private sector categories except for information and financial activities. Professional and technical services added 30,300 positions and there were 20,100 new temporary jobs, accounting for the bulk on the 70,000 increase for professional and business services.

Manufacturing payrolls rose by 50,000, largely due to hiring in metal products and machinery, while an increase of 44,000 in the leisure and hospitality sector was driven by a net gain of 32,800 workers at food service and drinking establishments.

Health care added its usual 30,000+ new jobs and overall government payrolls declined by 14,000, due largely to net job reduction of 11,000 at the local government level.

The CBO apparently tried to make this an apples-to-apples comparison by controlling for the many variables that affect wages and benefits and it seems to make sense – unless you’re a doctor or lawyer, you’re better compensated working for the gubment.

President Barack Obama jumped into a new social media format on Monday and, as if he doesn’t have enough to do, ended up promising a worried spouse to help find a job for her unemployed husband.

Obama got the assignment during a live-streamed interview organized by Google Plus, the online search giant’s new social networking site.

The forum was designed to show off Google Plus’ new “Hangout” feature, where several friends can video chat together.

“Industry tells me they don’t have enough highly-skilled engineers. If your husband is in that field, we should get his resume and I will forward it,” Obama told Jennifer Weddel of Fort Worth, Texas.
…
Obama seemed surprised to hear that a semiconductor engineer was unemployed.“I will follow up on this,” Obama said.

Well, hopefully he’s a “highly-skilled” (and highly-degreed) engineer and not just one of those folks who call themselves an engineer because they once manned a technical support phone line for Microsoft or somesuch. I can’t imagine what it would be like to still be working my old cubicle job – it’s coming up on five years now since I left that behind and, as each year goes by, it seems as though it’s another three years in the past.