Boffo Employment Numbers

The jobs data for October are out and the report shows 92,000 additional payroll jobs. A survey of economits had expected 123,000 (as if economists are good at predicting anything). Normally it would be this shortfall that gets highighted in the media to put a pessimistic spin on the numbers. Shockingly, every media outlet I have spied this AM takes the straightforward angle - that unemployment hits a five year low. Revisions to August and September numbers added 139,000 jobs to what was previously thought. This is on top of the, oh, 800,000 jobs that they missed counting all year. And let's not forget that as the unemployment rate has plunged well below 5% to 4.4%, there just ain't many great people left to hire, so faced with hiring bozos or not at all, some employers will not hire, which will slow the rate of hiring naturally, so a slowing in payroll hiring is to be expected.

(Yes, the word of the week is "boffo".)