Friday's report offered a conflicting picture on hiring. Unemployment fell because the Labor Department's household survey determined that more than a half-million people without jobs found work. The department conducts a separate survey of businesses, which showed tepid job creation. The two surveys sometimes diverge.
Horse puckey. How does the Labor Department conduct this survey? They want us to believe that FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND people filled 36,000 job openings? I'm a simple woman, but not THAT simple.
I think that the Labor Department, like most of our bureaucracies, is horribly broken and politicized. Any information coming from them should be hung on the toilet paper roller, where it will be put to its best use. (Dispensing from the top, of course.)
As Benjamin Disraeli once said,
ReplyDeleteThere are three types of lies,
Lies
Damned lies
And statistics...........
Mike, I original titled this post "Lies, And Damn Lies". It's so funny that you had the same thoughts on this latest batch of malarkey!
ReplyDelete"...more than a half-million people without jobs found work."
ReplyDeleteMore likely is half a million people stopped looking for work. It's ugly out there.
Luther # 3 .... precisely.
ReplyDeleteimgw:"http://www.cristyli.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Obama-Change-we-can-deceive-in.jpg"
#4 - LOL. I can't stand that man.
ReplyDeleteDitto.
ReplyDelete"More likely is half a million people stopped looking for work. It's ugly out there."
ReplyDeleteWell, hey - if they're not looking, they are not officially 'unemployed', right?
Isn't it frightening that the best economic news in more than 2 years is one falf of one million people just giving up?
Dang! I finally figured out what "change" really is ...
ReplyDeleteInteresting. (As in "interesting").
ReplyDeleteI think that decreased labor force participation has something to do with it... but:
If there were to be a big uptick in small business hiring, this is what it would look like in the stats: the employer's survey would miss it, and the household survey would catch it, and there would be a big disparity.
Now: is there any reason to believe that there might have been a big uptick in small business hiring? Yes - the tax deal in December, the election of a Republican house, big gains in Republican representation in statehouses across the country, and the likely high-water mark - if not outright rollback - of the Obama tax/spend/(mis)regulate agenda. This may have given some small business the confidence to go and hire.
There was some discussion of this possibility at Instapundit; I think it's credible. It will take some time to see how it plays out.
The possibility exists for the economy to get better. Particularly if the spending cuts outlined by Bob Corker get serious traction, and the Fed doesn't go for a third round of quantitative easing: the dollar will stabilize, long bond rates (and mortgages) will fall slightly, credit will expand gradually (there's _plenty_ of reserves in the system ffs), and a small and medium size business expansion could gradually take off.
The natural result of adopting Tea Party policies over the next year will be substantial improvement in the employment picture - maybe 7.8% or something by November 2012.
The important political task will be for the Tea Party and the Republicans to properly claim the credit for this, in the face of MSM spin for Obama.
This risk is not in itself reason to wish the economy ill, of course.
But if the economy improves, it will not be a validation of Obama's policies, but in fact their refudiation.
The business survey covers 400,000 businesses each month, while the household survey covers only 55,000.
ReplyDeleteSo it is statistically possible that enough households in the relatively small survey had someone who found work, and that extrapolation errors from taht would lead to this extremely weird result.
However, I still think it was probably a result of people simply giving up, and therefore no longer counted as unemployed.
'Why don't you remember, I'm your pal, say, buddy can you spare a dime?'
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZHEkU__Ijw
I tried to link to a Youtube video of the song this "Brother, Can You spare A Dime?" line was from.
ReplyDeleteBut as usual, codes, embeds, etc that work for others do not work for me.
Anyway, go to Youtube, look up the song title, and click the one sung by Bing Crosby (?!?!) to hear one of America's first protest songs.
Seriously off topic.
ReplyDeleteA reminder, as if anyone here needed one, of the horror that the world can be. I feel somewhat... guilty, unworthy, sacrilegious, in posting this link. I don't have the words, really.
Nonetheless, 138 thousand pictures of the Holocaust. The human beings who were victims of evil. IMO, an evil which could soon be revisted, just with different players.
Yad Vashem Photo Archive
Dances, sorry to step on your toes.
ReplyDeleteHere ya go, bro :-)
ReplyDeleteDances linkypoo
Luther, posting pictures of the greatest evil of modern time is germane, and in fact takes precedence, at any time.
ReplyDeleteNo worries, bro.
Florrie, I can always count on you. Thanks so much.
Happy to do it, Dances :-D
ReplyDeleteStill, Dances, I feel it was inappropriate.
ReplyDeleteVoyeur, though, is the word I was looking for.