The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    The August Employment figures change nothing

    Breathe.

    The only conclusion with respect to the election that we can draw from this report, is that there  are 95,000 fewer people who might be furious with Obama because they can't find a job for which they ,understandably,may blame him, .

    If it had been a gain of , say,  150,000 sure that would have been better: there'd have been an additional 55,000 fewer people who might have ceased being furious.But 95,000 was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick as my old granny used to say.

    Of course it's not necessarily the case that every one of those 95,000   previously unemployed were in fact a potential anti-Obama voter i.e. a Romney one.So the fact that 95,000 of them are no longer unemployed may not mean a 95,000 reduction in the Romney vote.

    But it sure doesn't ,in itself, add to his total.It reduces it .

    In other words,it was good news.

    The announcement is of course the occasion for a kabuki dance of competing assessments:

    "It's good"

    ; It's bad";

    "Good";

    "Bad".

    ;"Anyway, your mother wears army boots, seasonably adjusted"

    "So's your old man"

    But in fact the only sure conclusion is that Obama's is in a slightly better position than he was a month ago.

    In another post, Oxy Mora's Cousin Eddie possibly casts some light on the claim that 8.3% dropped to 8.1% due to a sudden increase in the number of disillusioned job seekers. Could be. But to me it's intuitively obvious that there wasn't a sudden sharp jump in the disillusioned on Aug 18. That's speculation. The facts are that 95,000 more people got a job and that 8.3% dropped to 8.1.

    I'll take it.

     

    Comments

    The September 8 edition of 538 makes encouraging reading.