It amazes me that so many writers and pundits and indeed news stories on MSNBC, Fox, CNBC, could get this data wrong.

*People who declare themselves U-6 are not stating whether or not they became a part-time worker. The question is, "are you working full time, would you like a full time job but can't find one due to economic circumstances?"*

What it means is more people recently who work part time are saying they'd like to work full time. It  *does not tell you if they became employed part time for that month*

And I have the numbers to back this from the report itself.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

Page 4 of 38 shows that last month Employment increased dramatically. +873,000, from 142.101 to 142.974 million. This is from the hosuehold survey.

Following up on Page 20 of 38 shows employment status.

Full time for August to September went from 114.388 million to 115.226 million. +838,000

Part time for August to Septemeber went from 27.757 million to 27.731 million. -26,000

If you add these numbers together, 115.226+27.731 you get about the number of total employed people, = 142.957 million (just about the number employed, 142.974 million).

And that shouldn't be surprising given the rest of the report also showed that +418,000 people entered the labor force (ahead of population growth rate by a lot). It's indicative of people coming back to the workforce. And given recent consumer confidence has been surging, it's not surprising therefor, that more part-time workers would say they'd like full time work but the economy is still not strong enough to make it happen.

So to all the news writers, and people who just repeat what they hear, try being an actual Journalist for a minute and look thru a report.