Did The BLS Forget To Count Thousands Of Energy Job Losses?

Zerohedge ^ | 02/06/2015 | Tyler Durden

[Rusty0604]

One of the convenient things about the sharp plunge in crude and its subsequent and acute impact on energy company staffing levels, is that due to its concentrated nature one can keep track of precisely how many layoffs corporations in the energy sector announced in January. And as Bloomberg helpfully tracks, there were at least (and surely many more that were not unaccounted for) 18,000 terminations by US companies in the high-paying energy sector (and thousands more by foreign companies who have laid of US workers which are not shown in this total).

According to third-party tracker Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number is roughly the same with 21,322 job cuts in January in the energy space attributed to the tumble in oil prices. Texas alone accounted for 19,833 of these layoffs.

“We may see oil-related job cuts extend well beyond those industries involved with exploration and extraction,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of the outplacement firm. He warned the retail, construction and entertainment sectors in regions that have benefited from the oil boom could face challenges.

The BLS report? Well, according to the January payrolls report, the number of Oil and Gas Extraction workers declined to 199.5K in January from 201.4K in December, a virtually non-exstant drop of 1,900 workers (and even the not seasonally adjusted, raw data shows a tiny drop of just 3.1K workers).

So our question is: did the BLS choose to ignore these thousands of jobs losses, or did it simply forget?

[proxy_user]

The work force is over 160 million. About 3.2 million people change jobs every month. The ‘jobs created’ figure is a net figure; when they say 250,000 jobs were created, they mean 2 million jobs were eliminated and 2.25 million jobs were created.

It’s a big world out there...

[grania]

Do they count as job losses before the laid off workers apply for unemployment? Some of these people most probably got severance pay for at least a few weeks. Also, what about people working as self-employed contractors? They don't collect unemployment when their contract ends. Do they even count in the unemployment statistic?

These are all reasons why a statistic about who's employed is much more meaningful.

[Rusty0604]

Yes, but according to the BLS data, only 1,900 jobs were lost in the oil and gas extraction, which doesn’t jive with what the oil companies are claiming.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm

[CPT Clay]

It will show up in the revisions to this months 257k

[logi_cal869]

Ummm...correct me if I’m mistaken, but to be clear there is no statistic for ‘jobs eliminated’...only for ‘unemployment claims’.

Statistics are worthless when those providing them continue to obfuscate to exact a desired result. In this case: Government.

[caver]

One thing is for sure, we shouldn’t believe a word coming from this government.

[aimhigh]

BLS bases its results on surveys, not real statistics. Bill Clinton skewed his unemployment numbers by telling BLS to NOT survey inner-city populations. Just before leaving office, Clinton gave the order to go back to including inner-city populations. That resulted in worse numbers for Bush, which Democrats quickly jumped on.

BLS is now an acronym for 'bullshit'.

[Rusty0604]

Yes, and Obama can’t have bad unemployment numbers while telling Americans that we need millions of new workers (illegals).

[proxy_user]

These statistics have nothing to do with claims for unemployment compensation.

See:

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm