[00:00.00]This month's jobs report was the first one since the government shutdown that captured some of its wider impact. 
[00:06.83]It also came one day after a government report found stronger-than-expected growth in the U.S. economy just before the shutdown.
[00:14.79]NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman puts some perspective on the latest data, part of his ongoing coverage on Making Sense of financial news.
[00:23.94]It was a tale of two jobs reports. Employers added 204,000 jobs in October, yet the unemployment rate rose to 7.3 percent. 
[00:37.56]How could both happen? Well, first, unemployment is based on a survey of households, the jobs number, on a separate sample of employers, the so- called establishment survey.
[00:49.92]The fact that the data come from two different surveys means that it's natural that from time to time you are going to see them telling different stories.
[00:57.12]And surveys, of course, have margins of error. 
[00:59.89]So, any conclusion, we asked Michael Strain of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
[01:05.84]There is a tepid recovery; we are adding jobs, but we're not adding enough jobs. 
[01:11.27]Unemployment rate is -- The unemployment rate is doing OK, but it's not falling nearly fast enough. And we have a lot of work left to do before the labor market is healed.
[01:19.93]Dean Baker is, if you will pardon us, top dog at the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. 
[01:27.49]Never trust any one month's numbers, he says, but while not the best of times, October certainly wasn't the worst. In fact: 
[01:36.95]Over 200,000 jobs being created in October, I think more -- more than I expected, more than most economists expected, and upward revisions for the prior two months. 
[01:44.45]So we're averaging over 200,000 the last three months, which is better than what we have seen.
[01:48.30]Actually, the 16-day shutdown delayed the jobs report by a week, which, Strain says, warped the final numbers.
[01:56.75]The household survey asked households for their employment status during the week that contains the 12th the month. 
[02:05.09]Collection usually begins immediately thereafter. In this case, the government was shut down, so collection efforts were delayed by a week. 
[02:13.35]So you're asking households to remember what they were doing two weeks ago, as opposed to remember what they were doing one week ago.
[02:19.89]And while that may seem like a minor change to a lot of people, evidence shows that changes like that can actually have a big impact on the quality of the data.
[02:28.34]End the shutdown!
[02:29.95]End the shutdown!
[02:31.06]What's more, explains Baker, temporarily furloughed federal workers were counted as unemployed in the household survey, since, technically, they weren't working. That hurt the unemployment rate.
[02:44.06]So the household survey showed a drop in employment, in government employment of about 450,000.So, these are people that were employed by the federal government, presuming mostly employed by the federal government. 
[02:54.92]They're on furlough. They don't -- they're asked, were you working the week of the 12th? Answer, no.
[03:00.94]But when it came to the establishment survey, government agencies reported these workers did have jobs. 
[03:09.10]Regardless, the private sector added far more jobs than expected, even during the shutdown.
[03:15.40]I was actually surprised. It's hard-pressed to find any evidence of the shutdown in the sectors I was looking to. 
[03:21.90]I was looking at places like restaurants, hotels, because I was expecting that you had areas -- the national parks were closed, here in D.C., a lot of the tourist sites. 
[03:32.22]People -- if you were planning a trip to D.C., I assume a lot of people canceled.
[03:35.98]So, I would have expected that there would be some falloff there. In fact, there was very rapid growth, over 50,000 jobs in that amusement-entertainment sector of the economy. 
[03:45.76]So, you're really hard-pressed to find the evidence of the shutdown in the establishment survey.
[03:51.32]During a speech today at the Port of New Orleans, President Obama offered his own framing of the report.
[03:58.01]We added about 200,000 new jobs last month. But there is no question that the shutdown harmed our jobs market. 
[04:05.22]The unemployment rate still ticked up, and we don't yet know all the data for this -- this final quarter of the year.But it could be down because of what happened in Washington.
[04:17.81]The White House's estimate of the shutdown's cost: more than $2 billion in back pay and lots of lost productivity.
[04:26.42]And, says Michael Strain, the shutdown means the data are even less certain than usual.
[04:32.57]But I would expect that next month's to be much more reliable than this month's.
[04:36.26]The never-ending story will pick up again on December 6.