About Those Poof, Pow, Bam Employment Numbers

[Demeter]

http://www.economicpolicymonitor.com/

About Those Poof, Pow, Bam Employment Numbers

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released data today that showed job creation exceeded forecasts and the unemployment rate unexpectedly declined in March. The number of people on payrolls grew by 180,000, the most in three months, and the February increase was revised higher to 113,000. The jobless rate fell to 4.4 percent, matching the lowest since May 2001. The total employment was reported at 146.3 million. But don't throw a party just yet.

There are several problems with this data. The first being the data shows that construction employment increased by 56,000 in March. Given the collapse of the housing market, this is unlikely. Some of it may have to do with February numbers being too negative, where adverse weather contributed to a more than normal decline that month--and thus the bounce up this month versus February. In reality, the construction industry has shown no net growth since employment peaked in September 2006. Over this span, job gains in the nonresidential components of construction have been more than offset by losses in the residential components.

Second, manufacturing employment continued to trend down over the month (-16,000), with declines in furniture and related products (-4,000), computer and electronic products (-4,000), textile mills (-2,000), and paper and paper products (-2,000). Not good.

Finally, the BLS in March added a magical 128,000 to the number employed with what they call their Birth/Death Model --it's not real counted new employment. It's some kind of estimate of an estimate, i.e., they guess how many new businesses are formed, how many die. They mix this all together with no hard data--and viola--new employment!

Breaking down the numbers and taking out the magical 128,000 and the construction gain of 56,000 and poof, pow,bam--the 180,000 increase becomes a decrease in employment of 4,000.
Labels: economy

posted by Raymond Weber @ 12:03 PM

[MadMaddie]

1. When I heard the secretary of Labor talking about the great numbers

the first thought that came to mind was "Bullshit".

So I have a question, when all of the propaganda and lies finally come to a point of no return, when the truth is laid out and it is clear that this administration and all of it's appointees have intentionally lied to the country, and instead of trying to right the ship they kept up the propanda at the risk of damage to America..

Can we call this Treason, can we prosecute them....?

[BearSquirrel2]

4. Whats funny is ...

What is hilarious is that Republicans reject all notions of statistical sampling when it comes to a census. However, when it comes to counting "jobs" they pull out methodology that would make any statistician blush.

Yes, the Bush administration makes its target numbers by shortening the ruler. I believe Reagan did this by including military personell in the unemployment numbers. If they want to change the ruler, the least they could do is go back and revise all the historical numbers to match their current methodology. But I think if they did, they would find that there was negative unemployment during the Clinton administration.

[rurallib]

2. Guessing is pretty much what this Admin does on everything

well after the spineless media reports this without question it will be revised way down.
BTW 180,000 just about keeps pace with new workers each month so 180,000 should be a barely acceptable minimum.

[Fovea]

3. Yet another manifestation of Lysenkoism in our time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

[BearSquirrel2]

5. Great link ...

Great link. Yeah, tell me again how Reagan "won" the cold war when the other team was busy shooting its star athletes. The Soviets were great at building military equipment. They were shitty at providing anything but the most requirements for human existence.

It's quite a shame that this type of "groupthink" is percolating into the US government under the Bush regime.

[Fovea]

7. There is an old saying--

Know thy enemy, it is who you are in greatest danger of becoming.

[durtee librul]

6. And who did they accuse of having fuzzy math? Methinks

they must have looked in a mirror.

I cannot understand how any THINKING american can believe these numbers when all they have to do is look around them and see the REAL numbers of the unemployed. It used to be the 'figurin' was done and the ones who had run out of uc bennies simply 'disappeared' off of the stat charts....now we have an entire new way of counting....unreal. Must be that good ole TX ejacation he got. (intentional poor grammar and spelling so the spelling police won't have to come and get me!)

[Nikia]

8. In Northern climates like the one I live in now (Wisconsin)

Very little construction is done in the winter. In spring, they hire a lot more workers. 56,000 construction workers added could be due to the change of seasons.

[Demeter]

9. IF It Had Actually Warmed UP, Maybe

But given the housing collapse, weather is irrelevant.