[Congressman Billybob]

These reports on job-changing should be laid down beside the quarterly reports on employment/unemployment. This is because the employment statistics are based on businesses known to exist and the time of the reports, whereas the changing jobs survey should locate people who are now employed in NEW businesses.

We should not ignore this additional factor of actual employment because no less than the Wall Street Journal and Barron's among others have noted that small businesses are more responsible for total employment growth than all of the top 500 businesses in the nation.

Especially at a time when the economy is just beginning to grow out of a recession, the job cutbacks in large corporations are well known and well documented; whereas, the job growth in small or new businesses is largely below the radar.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column, "Democrats Dancing to Tunes of Glory?," discussion thread on FR. Article also on ChronWatch.

[Lazamataz]

You make an interesting case!

[JNB]

I can not take the WSJ seriously anymore, to me they are just the NYT with a Neo-Conservative rather than Liberal slant. The Financial Times and the economist magazine have far better economic reporting. The brutal truth is unemployment as defined has been changed in the last 15 or so years , and in reality, unemployment in the US is around 10%.

[harpseal]

It was my understanding and I could be wrong that the unemployment numbers were gathered by means of a survey of households thus the new jobs generated by small business woul immediately be reflected in such a statistically valid survey.

Further, when one starts hiring teh first employee after oneself one has to start reporting to the government. Thus since the government has the reports and since as a small business one has already started reporting numbers for tax purposes all those stats are gathered by the Federal government within at least a month. Please give a little further explanation of just what inference you think should be taken from tehse numbers and some explanation of the mechanism whereby they are below the radar screen.