re: Guess which number
The actual summary report of the BLS can be found here.
Note that the official unemployment rate of 5.6 percent seems to be based on the household numbers (8,297 / 146,863 = .0565), not the payroll numbers. Is this significant?
If you take the ratio of payroll employed to civilian labor force you would get a rate of over 11 percent. Of course, this is not the calculation that has been used since Moses, so I suppose we can discount it.
Why do they calculate the unemployment rate using household numbers, but report the payroll numbers for jobs gained? These are the two numbers most quoted in the media, and they aren't using the same statistics.
