Data Underestimates New Jobless Claims

[Beetwasher]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=568&e=9&u=/nm/economy_jobless_dc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Labor Department (news - web sites), at the urging of Federal Reserve (news - web sites) Chairman Alan Greenspan (news - web sites), is working to fix a statistical quirk that causes the government to routinely underestimate the number of newly unemployed Americans each week, a department official said on Tuesday.

--snip--

Once again, we at DU are WAY ahead of the curve. We've known this for how long? Yahoo follows...

[otohara]

1. Can't Believe A Word

that comes from the Bush government. When will other people learn what we already know?

[Socialist Christian]

2. You might be a freeper if..........

this surprises you and you are ambivalent.

[phillybri]

3. I've been telling people in my office about this for months...

:dem:

[Fovea]

4. Breaking News--

Alan Greenspan pushes for Glasnost in Amerika!

[xchrom]

5. i'm not going to trust

greenspan's figures either.

[tsipple]

6. Greenspan Needs Accurate Data

So does the rest of the Federal Reserve Board. When you're setting monetary policy, new jobless claims factor into that decisionmaking.

Kudos to Alan Greenspan.

[La_Serpiente]

7. Bringing Enron Economics

to the Washington. GREEEEATTTT!!!

[Turley]

8. It's always been this way.

The methodology is not perfect but the important thing is the statistics are consistent over time so that consumers fo those statistics can make informed decisions.

The market would be perfectly happy to have the methodology improved, as long as it's done in a sensible, transparent way.

BTW, the people who compile and report these stats are career civil servants, i.e. they've been around a lot longer than Bush and will still be there once he's gone. I don't see any particular reason to accuse them of some sort of villainy just because they got a new boss.

[Bandit]

11. Greenspan is a renowned Republican

Just so you know who we are talking about. He is a major part of our financial troubles. He does things for politics not for America.

[Turley]

12. I sort of know who Greenspan is already

having been in the securities biz for years. Just so you know....

[Maeve]

14. Please read the article more fully

It's not about the actual numbers, but about the constant revisions:

"Each Thursday, Labor issues its count of Americans filing initial claims for state unemployment benefits in the latest week. In 51 of the past 52 weeks, it has also revised the previous week's number upward, making the picture less rosy than it originally appeared"

[Turley]

16. Please read my post more carefully

I'm a consumer of this information so I'm aware of these revisions. I use them all the time. The revisions are published simultaneously with the new figures the following week. All major U.S. economic figures are revised the following week (or month). It's the nature of statistics reporting.

The problem is that Duers are trying to say that this is Bush propaganda. In actuality these are the same numbers and methodology I've seen for years. They are unfairly villainizing people who have absolutely zero to do with Bush or the GOP. I think that's a shame.

[Beetwasher]

18. Why is Greenspan All of A Sudden So Worried About it Then?

Yes, the methodology probably hasn't been changed much, but it wouldn't surprise me if some people weren't taking advantage of this "statistical quirk" and abusing it to the admins advantage. Or do you think this admin. is above doing something like that?

[Maeve]

19. Professional statisticians who have a consistant error

Consistant in the same direction over a long period of time--that is bad statistical reporting. No excuse--it's worse for being long-term. When you have a number that is always wrong in the same way, you correct your methodology. Period.
It's compounded by the fact that they have been used to tout "improvements" that haven't been real. We've followed this in the Stock Watch Thread and the "error" or spin each week has led to a breakdown in confidence among many watchers in any numbers this "fuzzy math" administration puts out.

[Beetwasher]

20. Exactly! They've been abusing this "quirk"

and crowing about numbers that seemed like a slight improvement or decrease from the past week, only to have them quietly revised to show an actual INCREASE. This has happened numerous times. That tells me the "quirk" is being abused...

[papau]

21. Why do you say no change when the change was posted at DOL & DU?

career civil servants take orders from political appointees.

And the revised seasonal adjustment method put into effect this year was not a career civil servant idea.

Nor was the revise upward only that has resulted.

I do not accuse them (career civil servants) of some sort of villainy - I just note the villainy of the GOP and the fact that stats once considered - by me - as clean - are now biased in favor of good PR for Bush.

Since you are a consumer of this info, like myself, I am curious as to why you do not not the change that occured this year.

[Socialist Christian]

9. By the way just so you know. Alan Greenspan is a prodigy of Ayn Rand <nt>

[Kahuna]

10. Of course!

:puke:

[pansypoo53219]

13. in our local newspaper

they talked aboput the deficit in WEEKLY estimates. not monthly. so we don't really see the monthly GODAWFUL numbers.

[abelenkpe]

15. Anyone remember

an article from a while back which reported that the Bush Administration was not going to track unemployment data anymore? I think it was from a year ago. Does anyone know where to find it?

[Maeve]

17. Check this thread from Nov 6, particularly post 25

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=202977#203114

[papau]

23. It was large layoff report - and they have changed their mind - again- and

now publish it.

Seems folks do track all those major layoff notices so as to be able to anticipate the change in the unemployment rate - and those folks made so much noise that Bush is back to letting it be published.

Not that Bush was trying to hide anything for political purposes.

sigh....

:-)

[tom_paine]

22. I am, like, totally surprised...NOT.

One cannot believe a word that eminates from Imperial Sources.

[zbdent]

24. Who agrees with me that Greenspan is doing exactly what his

boss tells him to do?

Under Clinton, Greenspan was given a long leash, able to do what he felt was right. That included minor, small, well-timed increases in the federal interest rate.

Under Bush/Bush Handlers, who tend to be very controlling, Greenspan was told to "push the panic button" about the economy, and had to drop interest rates repeatedly and dramatically to send the markets into recession. This started right after the "decision" 12/12/2000.

Prior to Dec 2000, the idea was "tap on the brakes, we might be going a bit too fast".

After Dec 2000, the economy was thrown into reverse. Took a couple of months to stop the forward motion.

Remember, the recession did begin in March 2001. That means there was 2.5 to 3 months of coming to a halt, not running in reverse. That would place the true initiation of the recession somewhere in, say, DECEMBER!!! I also remember a bunch of freeper/dittododos screaming about how Gore was causing such terrible pain in the stock market by not surrendering or falling on his sword. What was the stock market at then? Somewhere in the 10600s?

[KayLaw]

25. Krugman brought it up

A Big Quarter

By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/opinion/31KRUG.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=


Here, though says it's been the past month:





The big question, of course, is jobs. Despite all that growth in the
third quarter, the number of jobs actually fell. And new claims for
unemployment insurance, a leading indicator for the job market, still
show no sign of a hiring boom. (By the way, for the last month there's
been a peculiar pattern: each week, headlines declare that new claims
fell from the previous week; a week later, the past week's number is
revised upward, and the apparent decline disappears.)