Last month was a poor month for job creation in the US.
Last month was an excellent month for job creation in the US.
That tale of two employment reports is true, and it continues a trend that has persisted for two and a half years. The discrepancies have made it possible for Republicans to herald a job recovery and for Democrats to deny one exists.
Both sets of statistics were issued by the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics, but they come from very different surveys. One, the establishment survey, which questions 160,000 employers, paints the bleak picture. The other, the household survey, which questions 60,000 people about whether they or other family members are working, paints the better picture.
Volatile
Which is right? Because of its smaller sample size, the household survey is always more volatile, and month-to-month changes can be deceptive for that reason. So economists normally pay more attention to the establishment survey. But the fact that they differ so drastically may mean that reality lies somewhere in between.
Overall, the household survey now shows that employment has risen by 1.9 million jobs, or 1.4 percent, since US President George W. Bush took office, while the establishment survey shows employment is down by 1.1 million jobs, or 0.8 percent.
The establishment survey concluded that last month was a poor month, with a seasonally adjusted job growth of just 32,000 jobs, far below the number that economists were expecting.
On a nonseasonally adjusted basis, the performance was even worse. It showed that there were 1.2 million fewer people working in the US last month than in June. The adjustment in part reflects seasonal workers who are not paid for the summer, such as some school employees.
The household survey, on a seasonally adjusted basis, showed a gain of 629,000 jobs last month. Before seasonal adjustment, the gain was an even larger 839,000 jobs. That may partly reflect the fact there are more agricultural jobs in the summer -- which are included in the household survey but not in the establishment one -- or that some workers who have the summer off would normally say they had jobs although they had not worked last month.
The household survey is used to calculate the unemployment rate, which fell to 5.5 percent last month, the lowest figure since October 2001.
The two surveys are not intended to produce the same results.
The household survey includes the self-employed as well as agricultural workers, who would not be counted in the establishment survey, and the establishment survey counts each job so that a worker with two jobs could be counted twice.
But over time the two surveys have been roughly similar, although with an interesting political difference. Republican administrations tend to produce better household numbers than establishment ones -- perhaps reflecting a better environment for the self-employed. Democratic administrations tend to show better establishment figures.
Divergence
Early in the Bush administration, which took office just as the economy was sliding into a recession after a period of prolonged growth that saw unemployment sink to historically low levels, both surveys showed a shrinking work force. But they began to diverge in early 2002, with the household survey finding steady job gains, while the establishment survey continued to show a shrinking number of people with jobs.
By the time the establishment survey hit bottom, in August of last year, it indicated that 705,000 jobs had vanished since January 2002, bringing the total job loss in the Bush administration to 2.6 million. But the household survey found that nearly 2 million jobs had been added since January 2002, almost reversing the job losses earlier in the Bush administration.
Since then, the two surveys have fluctuated, but the establishment survey has continued to paint a bleaker picture than the household one.
Politics
Going back to former US president Harry Truman, Bush -- by either measure -- has presided over an economy that has produced the poorest job creation record of any occupant of the White House to this point in a presidential term. The second worst was turned in by Bush's father, former US president George Herbert Walker Bush, who failed to win a second term in 1992.
But good job records also do not guarantee electoral success. The two best terms by that measure ended in 1968, when former US president Lyndon Johnson was president, and in 1980, when former US president Jimmy Carter was in the White House. In each year the Democrats were thrown out of the White House by dissatisfied voters.
A Democratic partisan would note that six of the seven best presidential terms, as measured by the establishment survey through the first three and a half years, have been under Democratic presidents, with the only Republican to make that list being former US president Ronald Reagan in his second term, when jobs grew by 9.5 percent. The seven worst by that measure were all Republican administrations.
On average, the establishment survey has shown a 10.1 percent rise under Democrats and a 4 percent gain under Republicans. The household survey has shown a less marked preference for Democrats, whose edge is 6.7 percent to 4.8 percent.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”