Fake Jobs Numbers Would Look Better Than This

RCM ^ | 10/08/2012 | Louis Woodhill

[SeekAndFind]

When the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the unemployment rate had fallen to 7.8% in September, some observers wondered if the numbers had been "cooked" for political purposes. They can relax. Fake jobs numbers wouldn't look as bad as these.

Two numbers in the BLS report attracted concern: the reported 873,000 increase in total employment, and the 0.3 percentage point reduction in the unemployment rate. These figures suggest a rapidly improving labor market, which would be very convenient for President Obama right now. However, as soon as one delves deeper into the BLS numbers, the reality of continued economic stagnation becomes clear.

As the White House has said repeatedly (and correctly), it isn't good to read too much into any one month's employment numbers. So, let's look at the third quarter of 2012 as a whole.

During the third quarter, total employment (Household Survey) increased by 559,000, or 1.57%. This was up considerably from the gain of 381,000 jobs in the previous quarter.

However, a minimum requirement to consider that a person has a "decent job" is that they have a full-time job if they want one. Accordingly, we can subtract the number of people involuntarily working part time for economic reasons from total employment to get the number of decent jobs.

As it happens, the number of people forced to work part time jobs when they wanted full time jobs increased by 403,000 during the third quarter of 2012, which means that the number of decent jobs increased by only 156,000.

Given that the working age population increased by 617,000 during the third quarter, this means that, on the margin, only 25% of new working age Americans were able to find a decent job during the quarter. And, there were actually 1000 fewer decent jobs

[Perdogg]

what about “Schrodinger’s student” in the report?

[SeekAndFind]

JOBS?

[Prov1322]

Larry Levin disagrees...

Phantom Jobs

Friday’s employment data was interesting; wasn’t it? I think it’s safe to say that it shocked everyone but the politicians. Like Santa Claus delivering presents to children, the Bureau of Lies & Statistics (BLS) delivered a shocking present for politicians before the election.

The Bureau of Lies & Statistics, a name that I have used for years and not due to this data, reported that the unemployment rate magically plummeted to 7.8%. This report surprised the former CEO of GE, Jack Welch, so much that he tweeted “Unbelievable jobs numbers...these Chicago guys will do anything…can’t debate so change numbers.” Even if Mr. Welch is a Romney supporter, this tweet like the BLS data, is surprising.

To be sure, there are conspiracy theories and political axes to grind over this number; however, I don’t agree with either. I simply believe the numbers are so tortured that they will scream anything at any time. In a word they are: unreliable.

Analysts at Jeffries agree with me in a recent report “…Taken at face value, the household survey would suggest that economic activity has been rocking-and-rolling and the labor market is bursting at the seams with jobs. We know that has not been the case, hence, the household data is difficult to believe and we are dismissive to the universal strength of the household survey data.

It would truly be wonderful if these numbers were believable, but they are not believable.

The crazy inconsistencies from month to month, as well as the INSANELY LARGE revisions (some over 1 MILLION in just one month) reflect the different samples used in the two surveys; one focuses on households the other on businesses. The so-called establishment survey has a vast sample size of 486,000 worksites, whereas the household survey covers just 60,000 homes.

What have the politicians been crowing about recently? Of course, they love the household portion of the jobs data now that it suits them (the other side of the isle would be doing the same – I hope I don’t have to remind my well-educated readers of that!).

For the conspiracy theorists among us, however, I may have an idea as to where a portion of the pop came from. For the first time in 22 straight years, the BLS declared that the segment of workers in the 20 to 24 year age group was positive. Said another way, every year since this metric has been compiled it has been a drag on the jobs data – until now.

The young adults in this 20-24 year age category decided, for the first time ever, to quit their lives as professional college students and enter the workforce…with a GDP growth level of a recessionary 1.7%. Does this make sense?

The odd thing though is that student loan data continues to skyrocket, especially during this jobs report. Student loans from the government, as well as sub-prime auto loans from the government, rose another $14,000,000,000.00, which does not correlate with the BLS assumption that the heretofore professional student gave up his nerdy ways for the massively abundant jobs scene.

I shall remind you again that the GDP is 1.7% and falling. Tortured numbers from the Bureau of Lies & Statistics – indeed!

Question: if Visa, Amex, and Master Card, as well as hotels, restaurants, business and more can track hundreds of $$billions in transactions – DAILY – IN REAL TIME – why can’t the government track 100k jobs over a full month’s time?

Answer: if it used real-time tracking software, it won’t be able to torture the data. Moreover, those in power (regardless of party) never want to know the real unemployment rate, which is near 16%.

Trade well and follow the trend, not the so-called “experts.”

Behold the age of infinite moral hazard! On April 2nd, 2009 CONgress forced FASB to suspend rule 157 in favor of deceitful accounting for the TBTF banking mafia.

larrylevin@tradingadvantage.com
Trading Advantage
(888) 755-3846

[Zakeet]

The civil service unions didn't cook the books as bad as they could have!

[pburgh01]

I don’t beleive the pools at all, but even the pollsters have seen an EPIC fail in the fake jobs report, no one bought it and no one changd back to Obama. Next lie Axelrod and Cutter, keep them coming.

[Texas Fossil]

Here is why the numbers are not credible:

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

“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) rose from 8.0 million in August to 8.6 million in September. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.”

Part time employment increased 600,000 people in September?

This is BS for the BLS.

[ncalburt]

Lous is a Hard core Romney hater and has given over 143,000 to
Obama and the Dems !!!
What s shock !!’
An Obama bot !

[LibLieSlayer]

Nice try but it was all based on lies... REALITY IS A B!TCH!

[ez]

This has to be very disappointing to them, since they’ve been massaging this number by dropping workers off the cliff for OVER A YEAR!!

[SampleMan]

They can relax. Fake jobs numbers wouldn't look as bad as these.

The only people that would be influenced are the undecideds, and any still undecided in this race is a shallow, flighty thinker. Precisely the type of person that would be influenced by the flash U3 number.

If Obama didn't direct the calculations, the Mandarin bureaucracy of career Democrats took it upon themselves, with each skewing the numbers as much as they thought the limits of statistical plausibility would allow. One thing I've noticed about undecideds is, that they never question the factual authenticity of any "non-partisan" government or media report.

[greeneyes]

The “real” unemployment number u6 is what should be the “official” number, and it was flat - more than 14%.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: The “real” unemployment number u6 is what should be the “official” number, and it was flat - more than 14%.

Here’s the question — when they reported unemployment numbers in the past (since the figures were first reported), on which figure were they mostly emphasizing?

For instance, under FDR, the unemployment rate reached over 20%. Was this U3 or U6?

[khelus]

Follow the Blue Lines for a more accurate representation of what's going on:

Unemployment counting all in the civilian labor force who are unemployed and employed part time but need full time plus those bumped out of the civilian labor force and need a job.



CPI measuring the cost of a set standard of living, not a declining standard of living



Real GDP using the above CPI

The following uses the government’s CPI

[greeneyes]

Any one know the margin of error for the household survey? I read on another thread that it was 400,000. So the parttime workers increased by 600,000 plus or minus 400,000?

[tanknetter]

These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.”

Part time employment increased 600,000 people in September?

This isn't all that surprising, given the ramp-up to Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas - and many corporations (like Toys-R-Us) were trumpeting how they planned to increase their part-time rolls by tens of thousands of workers. Toys-R-Us alone was something like 50,000. Then start figuring in all the other department and big-box chains out there and it's easy to see how employment can be ramped up VERY quickly.

The real BS there is how BLS admits that it's counting people who have more than one job TWICE (see my emphasis/bold above). So if, say, your full-time employer cut you back to 32 hours and you decided to pick up another 8-10 hour job to make ends meet you actually helped REDUCE the unemployment rate. Because you now have TWO jobs.

AEI has a really great analysis on the situation that ties all the pieces together pretty well. Worth the read, AND deserves to be posted on any/every thread dealing with the economy and jobs.

[txrefugee]

Does someone have the number of part-time workers that the federal government has hired in the last two months? It was alluded to a couple of times this morning on Fox & Friends, with the conclusion that the government is boosting Obama’s employment numbers in this way. The BLS can then say they had nothing to do with cooking the ludicrous numbers. They were pre-cooked before they got them!

No doubt they are continuing the strategy they started with the Chevy Volt at Government Motors, buying them for federal government fleets to make sagging sales look better.

[khelus]

RE: The “real” unemployment number u6 is what should be the “official” number, and it was flat - more than 14%.
Here’s the question — when they reported unemployment numbers in the past (since the figures were first reported), on which figure were they mostly emphasizing?
For instance, under FDR, the unemployment rate reached over 20%. Was this U3 or U6?

There is no way to directly compare the U's of the past with the U's of today.

The concept of discouraged workers was developed under JFK. There was a major rewrite of the way the U's are calculated; it was released under Clinton in the early 1990s. Part of the rewrite was removing long term discouraged workers from the civilian labor force.

OLD U-1 - U-7
U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer as a percent of the civilian labor force
U-2 Job losers as a percent of the civilian labor force U-3 Unemployed persons 25 years and over as a percent of the civilian labor force for persons 25 years and over
U-4 Unemployed full-time jobseekers as a percent of the full-time civilian labor force
U-5 Total unemployed as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate) [includes part time]
U-6 Total full-time jobseekers plus 1/2 part-time
jobseekers plus 1/2 total on part-time for economic reasons as a percent of the civilian labor force less 1/2 of the part-time labor force
U-7 Total full-time jobseekers plus 1/2 part-time jobseekers plus 1/2 total on part-time for economic reasons plus discouraged workers as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers less of the part-time labor force

NEW U-1 - U-6
U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force
U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force
U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)
U-4 Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached
workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers
U-6 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers

Here is an interesting article comparing unemployment in 2011 with the Great Depression

Here is a good approximation of unemployment counting all in the civilian labor force who are unemployed and employed part time but need full time plus those moved out of the civilian labor force who need jobs. The contention is that U-6 is the closest measure available today to compare to the Great Depression.

[Fully Awake DAV]

Numbers are great...and numbers which represent a measurement used for political purposes are often manipulated inversely of
reality.

The BLS number for the U-3 this past week is a prime example. Anyone who applied for UI 100 weeks ago has fallen off the roles.
2010 9.7 9.7 9.7 9.9 9.7 9.5 9.5 9.6 9.6 9.6 9.8 9.4

None of these people are counted...why...because they are no longer in the system!

[khelus]

. . . The real BS there is how BLS admits that it's counting people who have more than one job TWICE (see my emphasis/bold above). . . .

To make bad news more confusing one person with two jobs is counted twice in the payroll survey which generates the number of jobs created, but only counted once in the household survey which generates the unemployment rate.

The design and statistical tools used in both surveys have a strong bias toward a thriving economy. They don't work as well during downturns or when good jobs are replaced by inferior ones.