Fascinating series of tweets from the economist Justin Wolfers this morning. It seems that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its annual revisions of the jobs numbers, this time covering the period from April 2011 to March 2012. Result? They were only off by 386,000 jobs.
I see conservative brain-wheels turning now: Aha, so it's even worse! Sorry, kids. BLS lowballed it. Meaning, the economy added 386,000 more jobs in that one-year period that we previously knew. That, says Wolfers, equals 32,000 more jobs every month--every month, friends--than we knew. So the economy that year was adding an average of 194,000 jobs per month, not 162,000.
Finally, Wolfers tweeted this, at 10:19 am: "The BLS benchmark revisions means that there has been a net jobs gain since Jan '09. Romney can no longer talk about job losses under Obama."
I would say this is rather big news. Meshes pretty nicely with this recent development that people are apparently feeling a little better about the economy, and becomes, I should think, a pretty good applause line for Obama to add into his speeches.
