solarbird | Only for a moment

Good morning. Yes, the jobs report was not as bad as expected; the dollar index has jumped a point in response this morning. Yes, the birth/death model fudged it hardcore again, adding 220,000 non-seasonally-adjusted jobs to the total, which continues the BLS's fine tradition of adding "modelled" jobs to the employment report every month but one even throughout a severe recession with massive job losses not seen in decades. Hey, what's a little black-box fudging between you and me? However, that's only about the same amount as added last month (220,000 this month vs. 226,000 last month) added through this model which has never turned sustainedly negative throughout this recession, so even with that, the reduction in the rate of job losses is hopefully real.

Still, I'm confused by the jump in unemployment rate vs. the job loss count, even as presented. The radio this morning was spinning it as discouraged workers coming back into the labour force, but the number of discouraged workers was about the same as last month, the month before, and so on back to January, at 0.4% I'd think you'd see a reduction in the number of discouraged workers if a lot of them became undiscouraged enough to count as active unemployed again. (Note: that's seasonally-adjusted numbers. Non-seasonally-adjusted numbers show the same for April and May, but that both of these numbers are up from March's 0.3%.)

Full news release here. Chow down.