A recent reader of this blog, and my debate with Doug Henwood over whether the official April Jobs number of 263,000 jobs created should be accepted as totally accurate or whether other stats show that number may not be so accurate, raised some important questions that are perhaps at the heart of the matter.
I’m reproducing his comment verbatim in what follows in this addendum, since it succinctly summarizes one of the key issues.
My reply to his point follows in turn, summarizing why I think we should not necessarily accept the 263,000 as the key indicator of the US labor market:
Commentator:
“Hi Jack, I found your article in counterpunch very interesting. just one question on the numbers: Are you saying that 263,000 jobs were created by large businesses and then a certain number were created by small businesses, 155,000 of which were part time? or are you saying that 263,000 jobs were created in total but 155,000 of these 263,000 were part-time jobs? But if one of these studies surveys only large businesses and the other surveys only small businesses, aren’t you dealing with apples and oranges and that we really don’t know how many of these 263,000 new jobs created by large businesses were full time and how many were part time? my guess is that jobs created by large businesses would more likely be full time, whereas those created by smaller businesses would more likely be part-time. Obviously I’m having a hard time putting in writing exactly what I’m getting at, but perhaps you can pick it up.”
My Reply:
Your final sentence is the most likely scenario: most of the full time were created by large businesses. But we really don’t know for certain. We do know in the CPS survey, made up mostly of smaller businesses, that 155,000 were part time and that 191,000 full time jobs were lost. It suggests that small and medium sized businesses are converting full time to part time. If that is going on in the larger business report as well, it would be interesting. But all we get is a 263,000 number in the CES, without clarification how many are full time and how many part time. This is the problem of having two separate reports—one a survey based on sampling (CPS) and another just a population (CES). But when one, the CES, simply says 263,000 jobs (with no breakdown of part time to full time) and the other, the CPS, indicates 191,000 FT lost and 155,000 part time added, there’s clearly a contradiction here. Is part (less than one tenth of the total) of the business population (CES) of 9 to 10,000,000 growing jobs while a large segment of the rest 9 million (CPS) is reducing full time and replacing them with part time, temp, etc.? We really don’t know. Furthermore, remember we’re talking about ‘jobs’ and not about people getting work in the CES, while in the CPS we’re talking about people (with or without) jobs being interviewed. I would give greater weight to the CPS as an indication of what’s really going on–i.e. with full time jobs being converted to part time and a growing number of 2nd and 3rd jobs being taken by workers already employed. (Whereas Henwood accepts the CES as ‘more important’ than the CPS, as he says, and considers CES and 263,000 as a totally accurate of the state of the labor market).
Jack Rasmus
Dr. Jack Rasmus @drjackrasmus
Jack Rasmus 
Complex definitions are driven by deception
Hey, Jack. Jack, when did The US start running trade deficits, and why?
The last big run up in trade deficits started under Reagan. He raised interest rates to 18%. That drove up the price of the dollar, reducing US exports and causing imports to US to surge. The trade deficit was the result. This was planned. The growing trade deficits were accompanied by agreements with US trade partners to recycle their extra dollars back to the US. That recycling allowed the US to borrow to finance its deficits. That in turn allowed the US to have greater budget deficits, which were now escalating due to business-investors-1% tax cuts and rising defense-war spending. This is the ‘twin deficits’ arrangement of US neoliberalism created under Reagan and continued ever since. Trump is rearranging it, as part of his attempt to resurrect neoliberalism on a different plane and more aggressive and nasty: He believes that the greater revenues from tariffs will be sufficient to offset the loss of recycling of dollars (especially re. China). The tariffs are bringing in more revenues (and helping artificially to boost US GDP) and so far the recycling hasn’t stopped, but there are signs it may soon, as both China and Japan are slowing purchases. I’m covering all this in detail in my forthcoming book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism’. In short, trade deficits are necessary to fund budget deficits caused by tax cutting and war spending to excess. So why is Trump changing the rules of the trade deficit game. Because he thinks he can get even more for US corps from the rearranging. And because it’s clear that the global trade pie growth is slowing and will soon contract and the US elites, led by Trump, want to make sure they keep their lion’s share of the global trade pie when it does. So they are changing the rules of the trade game in their favor. This isn’t new. It’s happened before. In the 1980s when the US browbeat the Japanese to pay for the terms for the US, ditto the Europeans. Before that in 1944 with the Bretton Woods arrangement and the terms for Britain and Europe. And before that in the early 1920s when the Gold standard, from which Britain benefited, collapsed and the US stepped in with the dollar as a competing world trade currency vis a vis the British pound. This is just capitalist intra (capitalist)-class competition intensifying again