Truth About Jobs

文章出自：纽约时报

If anyone had doubts about the madness that has spread through a large part of the American political spectrum, the reaction to Friday’s better-than expected report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics should have settled the issue. For the immediate response of many on the right — and we’re not just talking fringe figures — was to cry conspiracy.

Leading the charge of what were quickly dubbed the “B.L.S. truthers” was none other than Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric, who posted an assertion on Twitter that the books had been cooked to help President Obama’s re-election campaign. His claim was quickly picked up by right-wing pundits and media personalities.

It was nonsense, of course. Job numbers are prepared by professional civil servants, at an agency that currently has no political appointees. But then maybe Mr. Welch — under whose leadership G.E. reported remarkably smooth earnings growth, with none of the short-term fluctuations you might have expected (fluctuations that reappeared under his successor) — doesn’t know how hard it would be to cook the jobs data.

Furthermore, the methods the bureau uses are public — and anyone familiar with the data understands that they are “noisy, ” that especially good (or bad) months will be reported now and then as a simple consequence of statistical randomness. And that in turn means that you shouldn’t put much weight on any one month’s report.

In that case, however, what is the somewhat longer-term trend? Is the U.S. employment picture getting better? Yes, it is.

Some background: the monthly employment report is based on two surveys. One asks a random sample of employers how many people are on their payroll. The other asks a random sample of households whether their members are working or looking for work. And if you look at the trend over the past year or so, both surveys suggest a labor market that is gradually on the mend, with job creation consistently exceeding growth in the working-age population.

On the employer side, the current numbers say that over the past year the economy added 150, 000 jobs a month, and revisions will probably push that number up significantly. That’s well above the 90, 000 or so added jobs per month that we need to keep up with population. (This number used to be higher, but underlying work force growth has dropped off sharply now that many baby boomers are reaching retirement age.)

Meanwhile, the household survey produces estimates of both the number of Americans employed and the number unemployed, defined as people who are seeking work but don’t currently have a job. The eye-popping number from Friday’s report was a sudden drop in the unemployment rate to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent, but as I said, you shouldn’t put too much emphasis on one month’s number. The more important point is that unemployment has been on a sustained downward trend.

But isn’t that just because people have given up looking for work, and hence no longer count as unemployed? Actually, no. It’s true that the employment-population ratio — the percentage of adults with jobs — has been more or less flat for the past year. But remember those aging baby boomers: the fraction of American adults who are in their prime working years is falling fast. Once you take the effects of an aging population into account, the numbers show a substantial improvement in the employment picture since the summer of 2011.

None of this should be taken to imply that the situation is good, or to deny that we should be doing better — a shortfall largely due to the scorched-earth tactics of Republicans, who have blocked any and all efforts to accelerate the pace of recovery. (If the American Jobs Act, proposed by the Obama administration last year, had been passed, the unemployment rate would probably be below 7 percent.) The U.S. economy is still far short of where it should be, and the job market has a long way to go before it makes up the ground lost in the Great Recession. But the employment data do suggest an economy that is slowly healing, an economy in which declining consumer debt burdens and a housing revival have finally put us on the road back to full employment.

And that’s the truth that the right can’t handle. The furor over Friday’s report revealed a political movement that is rooting for American failure, so obsessed with taking down Mr. Obama that good news for the nation’s long-suffering workers drives its members into a blind rage. It also revealed a movement that lives in an intellectual bubble, dealing with uncomfortable reality — whether that reality involves polls or economic data — not just by denying the facts, but by spinning wild conspiracy theories.

It is, quite simply, frightening to think that a movement this deranged wields so much political power.

重点词

• payroll
  n. 工资单
• consumer
  n. 消费者；用户，顾客
• retirement
  n. 退休，退役
• accelerate
  vt. 使……加快；使……增速; vi. 加速；...
• spectrum
  n. 光谱；频谱；范围；余象

• imply
  vt. 意味；暗示；隐含
• statistical
  adj. 统计的；统计学的
• substantial
  adj. 大量的；实质的；内容充实的; n. 本...
• fraction
  n. 分数；部分；小部分；稍微
• intellectual
  adj. 智力的；聪明的；理智的; n. 知识分...

就业的真相

发布时间：2012-10-12

文章出自：译言

    现在美国政界被恐慌的气氛所笼罩，如果有人还对此心存疑惑的话，那么美国劳动数据统计局周五发布的好于预期的回应报告则做出了最好的解答。大多数右翼分子的直接反应是——我并不单单指那些极端分子——高呼这是阴谋。

    一群人迅速被冠以“劳动统计局敢于说真话的人”，为首的不是别人，正是通用电气的前任主席杰克·维奇。他在推特网上发表言论，声称为了帮助现任总统奥巴马连任，报告发布的数据是经过“美化”的。右翼评论家以及媒体人士迅速发现他的言论并大肆宣扬。

    这当然是一派胡言。统计局所使用的方法都是公开的——任何一个对统计数据熟悉的人都明白，他们是“夸大的”，由于数据的随机性，统计就会不时地出现特别好或者坏的月份。因此，你不应该过分看重任何一个月的报告。

    然而，在这种情况下，就业的长期趋势究竟是怎样的呢？美国的就业形势是不是正在好转？答案是肯定的。

    这里有一些背景知识：每个月的就业报告是基于两份调查所做出的。一份是随机对一些雇主进行调查，问他们正在为多少人发工资。另一份是随机对一些家庭进行调查，问他们的家庭成员是正在工作还是正在找工作。如果你看了过去一年的就业趋势，两份调查都显示就业市场正逐渐活跃，创造的就业岗位正稳步超过适龄找工作的人数。

    在对雇主的调查方面，目前的数据显示，在过去的一年里，经济发展每月创造15万个就业岗位，稍加润色可能会使这一数据更加夸大。为了与新增的找工作人数相适应，每月大约需要9万个新增岗位。（这一数据过去更高些，但由于许多婴儿潮出生的人都已经到了退休年龄，潜在的劳动力增长率已经锐减。）

    同时，对每户家庭的调查同时估算出美国的就业人口和失业人口，这里的失业人口是指那些正在找工作，但目前没有工作的人。周五报告里我们所看的数据显示，失业率由8.1%锐减到7.8%，但正如我之前说过的，你不应该过分地看重一个月的数据。更重要的一点是失业率正呈现持续下降趋势。

    但是不是因为人们已经放弃找工作了，所以失业率才会下降？实际上不是的。过去一年的就业率，也就是有工作的成年人的比率确实是总体平稳的。但请注意，那些婴儿潮时出生的人：那些正值年轻力壮的劳动力的人数比率正在迅速下降。一旦你把人口老龄化的影响考虑其中的话，那么数据就会显示自从2011年夏天以来，就业形势明显好转。

    这些都不能反应形式是好的，或者去否定说我们应该做的更好——差额很大程度上是因为共和党人实行的焦土政策，这一阴谋想方设法阻碍一切加快恢复进程的努力。（如果奥巴马政府去年提议的美国就业行动法案通过的话，失业率大约会低于7%。）美国经济距它本来的面貌还有很大差距，要想弥补大危机所造成的损失，就业市场还有很长的路要走。但就业数据确实表明美国经济正在缓慢恢复，消费贷款负担正在下降，房地产市场正在复苏，这种经济发展形势正把我们带回全民就业的轨道。

    这就是右翼分子无法操控的真相。对于周五报告的狂怒反映了一股政治运动，这一运动正是美国失败的根本原因所在，给长久以来遭受痛苦折磨的工人带来的好消息让那些执着于把奥巴马总统拉下台的右翼分子狂怒不已。这也反映了一个根植于知识分子泡沫的运动，这一运动不仅通过否定现实，还通过大肆宣扬阴谋论来处理那些令自己不舒服的现实——无论是涉及选民投票数还是经济数据的现实。

    一场运动能使如此多的政治力量为之疯狂，这简直太令人恐惧了。