Where's Holden's Bush Boom?

I used to regularly cover the monthly unemployment figures (The Commissar liked to say I was looking for manure in a pile of ponies) but I basically ceded that beat to Fluffit.  However, nobody seems to dig deeper into the BLS releases and I was curious to see what's been happening lately.  Of course most people focus on the top line:

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 113,000 in July, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.8 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. 

Back in my early blogging days, when people keeping score at home noted that Bush had lost more jobs than Hoover, some apologists liked to look at a different section of the monthly figures:

[D]on't believe the widely reported loss of millions of manufacturing jobs since the Bush administration took office. All these alleged facts are either wrong or greatly exaggerated, based on the same faulty source.
...
There are two sources of labor market statistics, the Establishment Survey and the Household Survey--both conducted by the Labor Department. The first asks manufacturing and service sector companies how many employees they have. The second asks a sample of people whether they have jobs.
...
For the year ending in August, the Establishment Survey shows a loss of 463,000 jobs. The Household Survey shows that the economy added 313,000 new jobs in the same period. The Establishment Survey also shows the much discussed job loss since the Bush administration took office--2.7 million jobs. The Household Survey reduces the loss to 220,000, not good but far more typical of a period with recession and slow recovery. As the speed of recovery picks up, the latter loss will disappear by early next year.

I found many times that the Household Survey would actually make things look worse, as does July's:

Table A.  Major indicators of labor market activity, seasonally adjusted
(Numbers in thousands)
______________________________________________________________________________
                         |    Quarterly    |                          |
                         |    averages     |       Monthly data       |
                         |_________________|__________________________| June-
        Category         |       2006      |            2006          | July
                         |_________________|__________________________|change
                         |    I   |   II   |  May   |  June  |  July  |
 ________________________|________|________|________|________|________|_______
     HOUSEHOLD DATA      |                 Labor force status
                         |____________________________________________________
Civilian labor force.....| 150,405| 151,041| 150,991| 151,321| 151,534|    213
  Employment.............| 143,324| 144,009| 143,976| 144,363| 144,329|    -34
  Unemployment...........|   7,081|   7,032|   7,015|   6,957|   7,205|    248
Not in labor force.......|  77,359|  77,392|  77,437|  77,350|  77,379|     29
                         |________|________|________|________|________|_______ 

So the labor force grew 213k and employment dropped 34k according to this alternate data.  Doesn't sound all that good, does it?

And if you consider that economists generally say we need to add 150k a month to take up new entrants into the job market, the paltry 113k Establishment number isn't good, either.  29k more people aren't counted in the labor force, which I'm guessing means that the economy really needed to create 184k.

All in all, last month's report seems pretty ugly to me, as was June and May.

ntodd