Job numbers favor Democrats

Written By Unknown on Sabtu, 04 Oktober 2014 | 10.46

Advantage, Democrats — unless the 248,000 new jobs in September suddenly force Republicans to go on the offensive.

I will explain in a second what the Republicans' next move could be.

But first, you may have read that the Labor Department on Friday, in its last jobs report before the mid-term elections, revealed that job growth and the unemployment rate both improved nicely in September — in fact, better than I expected.

That's going to make the Republican battle to take over the Senate a lot harder because issue No. 1 with Americans is the economy.

Jobs = votes.

In addition to the unexpectedly strong job growth, the unemployment rate broke through the 6 handle — and you can bet that 5.9 percent rate will be in quite a few Democrats' campaign ads in the coming weeks.

Voters probably won't hear the second part of Labor's message — that the unemployment rate went down largely because 315,000 more people left the workforce in September.

What's a Republican to do?

Well, Republicans could look more closely at the numbers — as I've been suggesting for a long time.

Here are some stats on that point. The unemployment rate has declined 1.3 percentage points over the past year. The number of Americans who are defined as being in the labor force over that same period of time dropped by 0.5 percentage points.

In other words, a lot of the drop in the unemployment rate occurred because Americans have left the labor force — given up looking for work — and not because the job market has improved.

See how long it took for me to explain that?

It clearly won't fit nicely into a campaign ad.

So, let's get back to the unemployment rate for a second. I've been investigating the manipulation of the jobless rate for the last year — not by Labor but by people at the Census Bureau who compile the data that go into this statistic.

There's already been an investigation by the Census Bureau's Inspector General (IG), the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

To prevent fraud, the IG recommended significant changes in the way data for the unemployment rate are collected. And the Oversight/Joint Economic Committee report confirmed that surveys of jobless people were being fabricated at the Census Bureau's Philadelphia office.

Another Census supervisor — this one from the Denver region — has come forward and told Congress, as well as Commerce, that data were being falsified in that part of the country.

The House Oversight Committee, which was given that information within the last week, is controlled by Republicans. So, does the issue of falsified data suddenly have its big day before the election?


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