U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration is threatening to withhold the federal government’s September jobs report due to the partial government shutdown which began on October 1.
Due October 4, the report has already been completed. However the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) – which is part of Obama’s Department of Labor – is part of the 38 percent of the federal government that isn’t open for business.
How convenient, right? After all why inform the public of another month of sluggish job growth (and shrinking labor participation) if you don’t have to?
No worries. Private sector pollster Gallup provides a rolling 30-day unemployment report that’s updated daily. As of this writing, Gallup pegs the U.S. unemployment rate at 7.7 percent – which is higher than the government’s most recent estimate of 7.3 percent.
And while Gallup does not track an official labor participation rate – i.e. the percentage of the working age population that’s either gainfully employed or looking for work – it does publish a “payroll to population” number which tracks the percentage of the population that’s employed for at least thirty hours a week.
Economists expected a modest uptick in hiring for the month of September – including a downward revision of job totals for the months of July and August. The official unemployment rate was expected to hold at 7.3 percent.
Frankly, we think Obama’s decision to withhold this report is petty – but this is an opportunity for private sector providers to step up and fill the void.
15 comments
If you take the BLS and remove the L you have a true picture of the Feds to include Obama, Reid and Boehner, the three amigos of the shutdown.
Vote em all out from top to bottom! O has four more to screw things up, a bad mistake for him to get re-elected. Let’s not make the same mistake here with Ohaley, Owilson, Oeckstrom, etc. We need wholesale change from the White House, to Congress, to Governor, to legislature, to Supreme Court, to Town Hall and County Council…vote NO on incumbancy!
No to all incumbents Republican and Democrat! It’s the only way this Country and State will EVER get straightened out!
Ohh, ouch, no, I can’t take it, please don’t withhold your latest
overhyped, self serving, BS filled, semi-accuratelabor statistics – why hatever would we do!Keep it shut down Dims – sooner or later a majority of us will realize we really don’t need you for anything.
Another idiot conspiracy. Yes, Obama was so worried about the jobs report that he “forced” Republicans into obstructing us all the way into a government shutdown, effectively furloughing over 800,000 government workers. This is some Alex Jones level stupidity. The Department of Labor has a 16,304-employee workforce, of which only 2,954 are going to continue working during the shutdown. Yeah, being reduced to less than 20% of your workforce won’t cause any disruption in service!
What a surprise, a mere year after the last BS BLS conspiracy where unemployment went down before the election, and subsequently stayed at that level for several months before it started to go down yet again.
So, what is it this time? Obama should make people work without pay? Obama should have them work and pay them in defiance of Congress? Is the BLS report now an essential, mandatory, core function of government? Do you now trust the numbers enough to actually care?
Of course not, just playing politics.
Come on smirks. obonehead cant lie about the job numbers for a week or two. Big deal.
Personally, i don’t understand the problem. Whe the gubmint is closed, they can’t muck anything up. What’s so bad about them not being able to micromanage our lives. I love it. We should require congress to pass all monetary legislation on a weekly basis in perpetuity.
God forbid that the average citizen find out how little the majority of our
Government actually does.
Here are a few agencies that were shuttered yesterday that the press will never report on:
Department of the Interior: Indiana Arts and Craft Board (you don’t need an explanation of how stupid this one is)
The Department of Education (that educates no one)
Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade (a totally separate agency from
BATFE – that does virtually the same things)
House Office of the Clerk (supposedly has something to do with managing the
business of the House of Representatives and (I’m quoting here) …managing the offices and staff of deceased or retired representatives…”
REALLY, we need someone to manage dead representatives staffs? Well I guess it is appropriate, they had already managed the “brain dead” representative)
Northwest Power and Conservation Council (one of more than 25 agencies having something to do with “power management” like the TVA. The DOE, has multiple other agencies like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (and of course the totally related but totally separate agency the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board) who are duplicative and unnecessary.)
An finally my personal favorite – the NCA, no, not the National Command
Authority, the National Cemetery Administration (responsible for …burials, headstones or markers…”. Do we really need a NCA?)
WTF. Dagnabbit. My BEADS and RAINSTICKS are core functions of Gubmint Colonel. Don’t be messin with my stuff, just cut all the other guys junk out.
:P
National Cemetery Administration is part of the VA. They’re in charge of burying veterans of the wars conservatives love getting us into.
Yes, I am very familiar with the NCA – a bureaucratic boondoggle of an organization. I have been a casualty assistance officer (the guy who shows up in class A’s with the chaplain) on more occasions than I care to think about.
Why we need a separate named organization to manage cemetery space is beyond me – particularly when they don’t manage Arlington or the Soldier’s and Airman’s Cemetery, any of the state veterans’ cemeteries or the Battle Monument cemeteries or the national park cemeteries. Why the whole freaking boondoggle isn’t just a division of the VA is an even bigger mystery.
The NCA is a perfect example of the totally unnecessary duplication of services, systems, agencies and administrations that make our government unresponsive, over priced and generally of the attitude that the government is in business to grow itself.
This site needs to find some real SC stories to ‘cover’ rather than being just another national blog blathering on what it knows nothing about.
In case Sic has forgotten, the sole selling point of FITSNEWS was his past connection to SC politics.
Has that been so long ago, the best he can do is DSS employees violating client confidentiality regulations?
Well I reckon if SLED would do their job, Sic could do his. Hmmm????
YOU’RE the one who thinks he’s a ‘journalist’. Real journalists develop their own stories with hard work. They use sources as starting places. If Sic can’t publish because SLED is corrupt, then he needs to move on to other things. But, Sic is like his old boss Mark – too lazy to accomplish much of anything that isn’t dropped inhis lap.
Glad to see your drunk is over.
Nit Rat. Go back to the meds. I am not nor do I have any interest in being a journalist.
I’m enjoying the quasi shutdown myself. Too bad it won’t last long.