Inventing a Surge of Job Seekers

A front page Washington Post article told readers that: "The number of people looking for jobs rose by more than 200,000 last month compared with February, according to the Economic Policy Institute -- and that's a good sign, economists say. It means that Americans are seeing more jobs being created and that they're optimistic about their prospects." Umm, actually no. This increase in the size of the labor force is too small to be statistically significant. It is not uncommon for there to be big jumps in the size of the labor force for no obvious reason. For example, the labor force was reported as rising by 543,000 people in September of 2002, a time when the economy was still shedding jobs and by 554,000 jobs in April of 2009, when employment was still plummeting. There is no reason to think that the modest job growth shown for March would have any notably effect on job seeking.

--Dean Baker