11.09.2013

Hooray! Hooray! Oh oh…

Exuberance reigns in this NYTimes piece about the October jobs report…

Job Growth Eases Fears About Effect of Closing - NYTimes.com

Despite dysfunction in Washington and a 16-day government shutdown, the economy chugged along in October, surprising many analysts as private sector hiring bounced back after a spring slowdown.

…until paragraph 12, when suddenly…

But the unemployment rate, based on a separate survey of households that counted furloughed federal employees as out of work, rose to 7.3 percent in October from 7.2 percent in September.

One mystery buried in Friday’s report was a drop of 720,000 in the size of the labor force, and the ensuing fall in the labor participation rate to 62.8 percent, a 35-year low.

Oops. Good news, but maybe not.

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