How Do We Get 157,000 New Jobs From 1,507,000 Layoffs?

March 2013 reports will be released Friday, April 5th.  Check back then!

How do we get 157,000 new jobs from 1,507,000 layoffs?  How do we get 157,000 new jobs from 4,247,000 new hires? 

Ah... It's called the JOLTS (Job Openings, Layoffs, and Turnover Survey) report!  I was really, really trying to explain this to someone commenting at the Huffington Post who perhaps is just not that bright:

I wrote:

Murphy, I'll try one last time. I'm really trying to explain this so that it makes sense to you.  

We don't have layoff and discharge figures from February yet. Those won't come out until next month. 

But in January, 1,507,000 people were laid off or discharged. That is the LOWEST number of people laid off or discharged during a month for at least ten years. Now 4,247,000 people were HIRED in January. That is a solid number of new hires. Meanwhile, 2,218,000 people QUIT their jobs in January. (There were also 376,000 separations for "other" reasons such as retirement.)

Now let's add this up: 4,247,000 hires MINUS 4,101,000 separations for all reasons (1,507,000 + 2,218,000 + 376,000). That comes out to 146,000 new jobs in January. (The initial jobs estimate in January was 157,000 new jobs, so these numbers are very close.)

I don't know how else to explain this. People lose jobs, millions of them, and gain jobs, millions of them every month. The "new jobs" numbers is a NET number: The number of new jobs MINUS the number of jobs lost.”

The reply from "Murphy":

4,247,000 hires would be great if it was true but since it's a load of bull then these number your pulling out your rear sucks!

Yes, people, 4,247,000 people DID get hired in January, (more info at the link) and over 3,900,000 people have been hired every month since March of 2010.  No, I don't just sit here and make up numbers. Good heavens; no wonder we have such bad political leaders. People like Murphy vote and can't even understand basic arithmetic.