Unemployment drops to 7.8%, labor force up.

[Beet]

This month- +114,000
Last month- +142,000, revised from +96,000
July - +181,000, revised from +141,000
Workweek up 0.1 to 34.5 hours
Hourly wages up 0.4 percent
Jobless rate down sharply to 7.8 percent

In the past 3 months, jobs growth has been at a monthly average rate of 146,000 per month. That's above the 104,115 per month needed to keep up with population growth. In fact, it's consistent with a long term unemployment rate under 8 percent. So the drop of unemployment below 8 percent cannot be attributed to labor force discouragement. Looking at the revisions, again, particularly to August, it shows why we shouldn't put too much stock on one month's numbers, and look at the medium term trend instead.

[Beet]

Um no.  These numbers were clearly jimmied.  The unemployment rate does NOT fall by .3% when the economy adds only 114,000 jobs.  It rarely even happens when it adds 300,000+ jobs.  Something smells here.

The unemployment rate and jobs numbers are based on two separate surveys. The household survey, which is used to determine the unemployment rate, is a survey of individuals and tends to be more volatile. It showed an increase of 873,000 jobs. The establishment survey is a survey of big businesses and is where the 114,000 and the 86,000 in revisions comes from. Usually this survey underestimates firing during recessions and underestimates hiring during recoveries like we have now, because it doesn't pick up on new business formation or hiring by smaller companies, although it tries to estimate this. My company, for example, I was the 49th employee when I was hired in mid August and now there are 60 employees. But of course it wasn't surveyed by the BLS.