According to the BLS they do not take into account "immigration status" and that includes foreign guest workers. They will only write up "foreign born", which tells you nothing about illegal, green card, guest worker, which type of Visa and so on. That is pretty ridiculous for a domestic labor market metric, esp. with ~17 million "foreign born" in the labor force. This is something pretty ridiculous generally. Supposedly the U.S. is a melting pot, yet statistics are always broken down by males/females, white people, blacks & Hispanics. That's it too. It's like revisiting 1965 the way these stats are, regardless of what has changed in labor markets as well as hiring practices, in that time.

That said, there is a massive underground economy where employees are not registered, it's all cash under the table or no tax returns, phony ids and so on. But obviously if the estimates are right w/ 11-22 M illegals in the U.S., which is probably about 5% of the overall labor force (about 7.8 million participating who are here illegally), that will skew the numbers. It really skews the numbers in occupational employment rates. In other words if a STEM is displaced by a H-1B, the unemployment rate still comes up very low and that displaced STEM is now counted as a Wal-mart worker, instead of a displaced technical worker.

What committee? I missed this, so much stuff going on. Well, I have a funny feeling the green shooters will crash and burn when their portfolios do. ;)

The rest of us, down on the ground are saying "what are the jobs man".

On the increasing unemployment rate, well, gee, one can say people are getting registered because they are now looking for a job, but ya know, you can also look at U6 and that jumped, so uh, the worse number is that 27 weeks or longer count.

Take 188,000 from birth/death net and add about 120,000 from legal and illegal immigration and we come close to the 290,000 jobs.

The difficulty with Birth Death is the seasonality. I understand the number if you mean the recent grads. But grads will not appear as stats until the May Stats come out.

I think the real calculation is New Jobs = New Grads + Job Re-Entrants + Immigration. But something would be wrong with that formula because of 'dark matter' of job destruction.That number includes all the new layoffs and new 'discouraged workers'.

BTW in 2008 5 Million small business failed. That number is also making the potential labor pool inflated.

The market is in the midst of a crash right now so any possible positives from these numbers is being ignored in favor of bigger issues.

Citi Sees Up to 20% Selloff

"They can't continue to bail everyone out. You just move money from one balance sheet to another...that is simply not a solution, and markets realize this."

It's in this report, although I've been adding to the post after the original publication date.

You cannot subtract directly SA data from not seasonally adjusted data.

That said.....

My problem with these estimates is I simply do not believe there were that many "New businesses" created uncounted jobs to make this primarily a "plus" and that's from 2007 onward. No way in hell. Small business loans dried up and they are still dried up. I guess we can look at the total number of starts and dissolution in businesses over this time period (remind me to check that out), but off the top of my head, I am like no way were there new businesses which magically generated all of these uncounted jobs. (unproved with data at the moment).

The BLS Birth/Death model added 188,000 of those 290,000 jobs.
That's 62,000 more than April of last year.

They use it as an online discussion, chat, the comments are possible to do that (and hopefully will be greatly improved on the major upgrade on this site!).

It's true, the troll hunters will pop up on a diary within 10 seconds of it's publication, no way they can read it and if you're talking about something they don't like, damn the facts.

But midtowng is well known there (I was for a time but I am investing all of my time on The Economic Populist now), and he does get recognition of his good posts. So did I, but the comments still to me were a cess pool a lot of the time.

But bottom line is we are an economics site for lay people. As one can see, by our lovely bills in Congress, no financial reform, the scorecard is Wall Street - batting 1000, American people, batting 0. For the most part, that's the situation, when it comes to enacting something that could really help and change the U.S. economy in favor of the U.S. middle class, we are losing and losing big time and that's with the theory, facts, statistics on our side.

So, the goal is to increase focus on the facts and let's face it, the middle class at large has no power, no real representation in Congress, is more of just something to consider public opinion manipulation on, a few Populist speeches here and there, but change the system from skewed towards Wall Street, MNCs, executives to the U.S. labor force? Obviously no way in hell these players intend on doing that. We're the proletariat to them.

I have asked this question to people, normally people with those $20,000 car loans.

With your loan to buy a car, you have exhibited the ability to do so and willingly went into debt. You purchase makes you happy. What if you needed a $20,000 operation to save your life, would you so willingly take out a loan to pay for it. Would you be so happy of the medical purchase.

People don't like that question because it is based on a different responsibility. It is not based on consumption but is based on individual responsibility. All around we are bombarded with the rights of consumption, to consume and never stop. But to pay for something that isn't part of the consumption equation is very foreign to modern man.

It was different when my 87 year old mother was in her young years. They were a generation that responsibility was not based on never ending consumption.

There are true real needs such as taking care of your health but more false needs are foisted upon us. Since I started driving in the 1960's I have only owned one new vehicle. That was purchased because I had to have a van with special hauling needs, the engine was going to be abused, etc. and a used vehicle would not fit the bill. Believe me I tried and they all quickly died. Why do so many people feel the need to go into debt for new cars?

Fantastic description. This over-consumption, this obsession and mania for consumption for its own sake, this lack of any mature self-discipline in spending, this confusion of wants and needs, this willing assumption of enormous debt, all this has been one factor in the economic meltdown. I do not wish to minimize or excuse the guilt of big finance, etc., but we consumers, as a group, have played right into their hands. Each gainfully employed individual can make the choice to live well within his means. Yes, I am aware that the unemployed have very few choices, but I am just saying that the causes of our current malaise are multiple and mutually reinforcing.