will, then it is six of one half a dozen of the other but if you think people spend their own money more whitesly this is wisely, this is a headwind. health you take it to the privately held businesses and the communities, and people trying to get ahead, what do they need to do? what needs to change? what needs to change is the tax code but that is probably not what is going to happen. what is happen this year you can see it in the retail numbers, the last two out of three months with have had less retail sales than we would have expected. they were down. this is really bad for the overall economy. you are going to start seeing, you already are see it in the confidence number, the worst confidence numbers in nine months. if that continues, you will see it in hiring, the last payroll numbers only 88,000 jobs, that will continue. these are head wins for the overall economy. i am not for recasting recession
i m hampton pearson with your cnbc market wrap. the dow had its best january since 1994. despite a loss today, the s&p fell 3 but had its best january since 1997. the nasdaq ended flat. jobless claims rose by 38,000 last week. that was a bigger gain than expected. meanwhile, according to adp, private sector employers added 192,000 jobs this month. and tomorrow we get the latest payroll numbers, a gain of 168,000 is expected with the unemployment rate remaining steady at 7.8%. that s it from cnbc, first in business worldwide. now back to hardball.
i ve heard it s as high as 11% right now if you do the math properly? well, the system as you point out is flawed. and we rely on a lot of inaccurate data. i have to rely on the payroll numbers, they re fairly accurate and they seem to over time match up with, in the private sector with what adp reports, automatic data processing. the household numbers, politicians will focus on that. i was scratching my head. and tell you the truth, i bet you the president was scratching his head, but i m sure pretty happy with the number. jamie: if it s interpreted just on paper, probably jumping for joy just that it went down because it hasn t in so long. i guess my question for you, then, if it s a variable and we really don t know what it is, do you define this as a recovery. i can t define it as a recovery, we re still, you know, we re barely, we re hovering close to stall speed. and that s where we remain right now. and we re approaching the fiscal cliff and noi a lot of
is, a household survey and the sample size is very low. jamie: they pick up the phone and call people. that s right. jamie: are you home, are you working. and they pick up the phone and very inaccurate and even economists on both sides of the aisle will point to the fact that they rely on the payroll numbers, that s a fairly accurate number consistent with other data that we look at. the household number is a survey and it s extremely volatile and what we may see, literally, just days before the election, you may see this completely reversed and the unemployment rate go back up. jamie: i recall that it takes, 200,000 new jobs a month just to maintain what we need in the country. that s correct. jamie: we haven t seen that in a very long time. it seems then, if we can t rely on the number, why is it that our country can t come up with a system then to tell us accurately, besides 23 million people unemployed plus underemployed.
of key swing states, the obama folks have twice the number of field offices. the l.a. times looked at the payroll numbers. they find the obama campaign is employing twice the number of staff as the the romney campaign last month at about the same cost. there are twice as many people working on the obama campaign if you exclude the $200,000 the romney campaign paid out in bonuses to its campaign officials last month, the romney s payroll number was still roughly the same as president obama s even though president obama had double the number of boots on the ground. fewer romney staff but they get paid a lot more. there s a reason president obama is ahead in the last 20 national polls. there s a reason he s up by eight in the latest washington post poll in ohio. his campaign is doing more and whichever way you squint at the data, president obama is winning his effort at reelection.