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After the release of the the April jobs report yesterday, Granite State Republicans fell all over themselves blasting Pres. Obama over the rise in the unemployment rate from 8.8% to 9.0%.
Rich Killion: "it is time for a change in oval office ... Unemployment back to 9%"
Rep. Frank Guinta: April’s two-tenths of a percent increase is especially discouraging news...
They failed to mention one thing. Economists agree, this was a good jobs report -- probably the best jobs report since Lehman collapsed.
The economy added 244,000 jobs in April. It also added 50,000 more jobs than we thought during February and March. Aside from a few months in the spring of 2010, when the job numbers were inflated by temporary census hires, this is the single best month of job growth we’ve had since the crash.
So, what about that 0.2% rise in the unemployment rate? One explanation would be that discouraged workers began returning to the labor force, but the labor-force participation rate and the employment-to-population ratio were unchanged. The answer? Statistical noise.
The rise in the unemployment rate is mostly a reflection that the rate fell by an artificially large amount over the previous several months. It doesn’t actually mean unemployment rose last month. Instead, it reflects a kind of statistical catch-up. The old picture of the job market, as presented by the household survey, had been too optimistic. ... Today’s report helps correct the picture. This is simply the nature of surveys: they have noise in them.
