August unemployment report shows weakness. Commander-in-Tweet silent about his job creation skills

Unlike the previous six month, Friday’s release of the government’s estimate of new jobs created in August did not spur Pr*sident Donald Trump to again tout how many jobs he has created in the months he’s been squatting in the White House. That’s actually welcome news.

As economists point out—usually to no avail—a president’s direct impact on job creation is always limited unless they adopt major policies, like the 2009 stimulus package, which inject or curtail federal spending for specific kinds of programs. Since the fiscal year ends in September, there’s no good reason to credit or blame any president for jobs created or shed before then during the first year they are in office.

So maybe he finally gets it. Or maybe he forgot. Or perhaps he just decided not to take credit for the relatively weak showing of 156,000 seasonally adjusted new jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics said were created in August. That was well below the consensus in Bloomberg’s survey of experts earlier this week, which forecast the gain would be 180,000 new jobs. Of course, probably the minute this is posted, he’ll make a liar of me and tweet how great his job creation is.

The private sector generated 165,000 jobs in August, but the public sector lost 9,000. The overall calculation was determined through an analysis of the Current Employment Survey of 147,000 business establishments. This latest BLS count makes August the 83rd consecutive month of overall job growth.

Based on more complete information available than when its numbers were first released, the bureau revised its job counts for June and July. The tally for June fell from 231,000 to 210,000, and for July went from 209,000 to 189,000.

The unemployment rate is calculated from another study—the Current Population Survey of 60,000 households. The “headline rate,” which is the most commonly reported upon and which the BLS labels U3—came in at 4.4 percent. That’s up 0.1 point from last month but is still the lowest rate in 16 years. In the past quarter century, the lowest the rate reached was 3.8 percent in April 2000.

from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2vQ2zJ6