A Mixed Bag on Good Friday

I remember being baffled, when I was growing up, as to why the day that Jesus was crucified was called Good Friday.

I don't recall that anyone ever really explained it to me, but it gradually became clear that the word "good" did not refer to what had happened — because, obviously, the act of killing someone is not a good thing — but rather what Jesus' death meant to Christians.

Today, there are some Christians who question whether Jesus had to die, but many insist that it was necessary for him to die (and then rise from the dead) to seal the deal for the redemption of mankind. That is the "good news" that Christians talk about.

Of course, if you speak to a non–Christian, you're apt to be told that today is an ordinary Friday.

Well, however one feels about Good Friday, there is some good news on this particular Friday — at least on the surface.

I'm talking about today's jobs report from the Labor Department — 162,000 jobs were added to the economy in March.

"The pace of job growth in March was the best in three years," writes Javier Hernandez in the New York Times, "bolstering hopes that the still–sputtering recovery was gaining traction."

To be sure, that number is encouraging. And, considering the fact that the recession began in December 2007 and this is really the first time in the interminable duration of this economic downturn that an apparently significant number of jobs has been added to the workforce, it is perhaps not surprising that the focus of many is on that number.

But that number doesn't tell the whole story.

As Frank Ahrens writes in the Washington Post, the unemployment rate remained unchanged, even with the jobs that were added. That wasn't really a surprise.

Forecasters expected it, Ahrens writes. "On Thursday, the number of new jobless claims filed last week dipped slightly, down 6,000 to 439,000. It's tough for this economy to start creating a meaningful number of new jobs until the weekly new jobless claims number gets down into the low 400s and stays there."

And, while it is undoubtedly good news that jobs were added, Ahrens points out that fewer jobs were added than expected. "Most forecasters were expecting about 200,000 new jobs to be created last month," Ahrens writes, "and the shortfall underlines the wobbly nature of this recovery."

Making it wobblier still is the fact that nearly one–third of those jobs (48,000) were temporary jobs compiling Census information. In a way, though, that is good news by itself. Economists were expecting 100,000 Census jobs to be filled, which would have accounted for half of their anticipated gains.

Still, when you consider that job gains fell short of expectations, the total of non–Census jobs (which includes another 40,000 temporary jobs in health services) was only marginally higher than expected.

And Ahrens makes an important point in his article. If you've been watching the economic news more closely than ever — and most people probably have — we've been told repeatedly in recent months that the recession was over or ending, even though unemployment numbers didn't reflect that.

As unpleasant as that is, this is typical. That doesn't prevent it from being disappointing for the unemployed, though, and that poses a serious problem for Democrats who, fresh from their health care triumph, seem to be flexing their legislative muscle for the first time since one of their own was elected president.

"The unemployment rate has stayed high for months, if not quarters, following the end of each previous modern recession," Ahrens writes. And he is correct. In fact, it was a double–edged sword for a couple of presidents — Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — who were elected in large part because of joblessness and then suffered electoral setbacks two years later when voters did not perceive any improvement.

"The nation's high unemployment rate has become a political issue for the Democratic Party, in charge of the White House and Congress," Ahrens writes. "The party faces pressure to create new jobs without incurring further wrath from Republicans and other deficit hawks, worried that additional government–subsidized stimulus and jobs bills will add dangerously to the budget deficit and national debt."

Of course, the picture could change — for better or worse — between now and November. But the truth, whether the Democrats acknowledge it or not, is that the economy needs to add a lot more jobs every month indefinitely to get back to where it was in December 2007 — and the experts don't think that is in the cards.

"Economists and forecasters expect the rate to hover near 10 percent for at least the remainder of the year," Ahrens observes.

But they've been wrong before.

The Deceit of Numbers

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Can anyone explain to me what the jobless numbers that were released today are really saying?

I've been following the jobs numbers intently ever since I was terminated, but rarely has it been easy for me to comprehend what they were trying to tell me. Truth is, I was never much of a mathematician when I was growing up. When I was in school, I remember being told by my math teachers that numbers don't lie. That notion appealed to me, even if the numbers were something of a mystery, because it reflected the reverence my parents had for truth, a reverence they passed along to me.

And, even though my leaning, first as a journalism student and then as a practicing journalist, was to words, I could see a certain logic in the claim that numbers didn't lie. I knew quite well that words were open to interpretation. But numbers were not.

At least, that is what I believed when I was growing up.

But now I tend to agree with fictional pollster/political operative Joey Lucas on The West Wing, who told Josh that numbers lie all the time.

That, I believe, is because of the assumptions that people attach to numbers, and, in this economy, that seems to be particularly true of unemployment numbers. Raw jobless numbers seem to be contradictory, anyway, and it isn't helped by the fact that everyone, on the political right and the political left, manipulates them.

The numbers themselves don't lie. I mean, five of anything is still five, right? The lie is to be found in the interpretation.

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I offer, as Exhibit A, this morning's home page of the New York Times website.

As you can see, the headline on the story about the unemployment report says, "Labor Market Shows Signs of Reawakening in New Data."

But is that really what the story says?

Actually, no. The story does report that the unemployment rate went down, from 10.0% to 9.7%, but the economy added no jobs. In fact, it lost 20,000 jobs — which isn't nearly as many as the economy was losing a year ago but it's still a net loss.

And the Times conceded the "unusual degree of statistical uncertainty" in the latest jobs report.

"The Labor Department revised past data to show that the economy comprised 1.36 million fewer jobs in December than previously thought," report Peter Goodman and Javier Hernandez. "The revisions showed the economy lost 150,000 jobs in December — far more than the 85,000 initially reported.

"The report also featured a new way in which the government estimates the population, which is used to calculate the unemployment rate. That prompted some economists to dismiss the drop in joblessness as a statistical quirk."

Like all the other unemployed Americans, I would like to believe that the numbers really do indicate that a "reawakening" is under way in the labor market.

But I can only conclude that the deception continues.

The Worsening Job Market

Economists expect that, when the Labor Department gives its monthly jobs report tomorrow, it will show that 650,000 more jobs were lost in February and that unemployment has risen to 7.9%.

You can spin that information any way you'd like. As Chris Isidore of CNNMoney.com reports, "[S]ome have argued that this jobs downturn is not as bad as the early 1980s. The unemployment rate peaked at 10.8% in late 1982."

That's true. But I can't recall hearing anyone suggest that this jobs downturn has peaked yet.

And, Isidore continues, "If the job loss forecasts for February turn out to be accurate, it would be the worst monthly drop since 1949."

Think about that for a minute. The worst monthly drop in 60 years.

And job losses haven't peaked yet.

Isidore has more. "It would also bring total job losses over the last six months to 3.1 million, the largest six-month job loss since the end of World War II."

That's close enough to the levels of the Great Depression for me. I'm convinced. It's the worst economic crisis of my lifetime — even if it never reaches the level of "depression" ... technically.

If the stimulus package really is going to be the job producer we were told it would be, this would be a good time to start showing it.

In the meantime, the New York Times' Room for Debate blog sought the advice of some experts on what people can do when they lose their jobs. Some of the advice is pretty basic, but some of it can be beneficial — although it seems to be aimed at helping those who are straddling the fence rather than those who have already been pushed off.