[familyofman]

"The expert econonmists were expecting 200,000 plus jobs. Why are they most always wrong?"

My theory is their models were built on old assumptions and have not been updated enough to take into account the 'real' economic world we are living in now. The impacts of illegals, outsourcing, record trade deficits....these factors are not probably being weighted properly in the models.

[lelio]

My theory is their models were built on old assumptions and have not been updated enough to take into account the 'real' economic world we are living in now. The impacts of illegals, outsourcing, record trade deficits....these factors are not probably being weighted properly in the models.

Agree 100%. How is the government going to count all the small businesses that employs 10-20 people? They can't -- there's millions of them. Be off by one employee per company and suddenly 1M people are out of work.

The BLS is trying to capture these people with the "Birth / Death" model recently introduced. However its a model for an older economy -- if a telecom died off in 1997 all those people would immediately get other jobs in spinoffs or working for competitors. The BLS is trying to apply that model to today's economy when spinoffs and IPOs aren't happening multiple times a day.

What's the solution? Perhaps not to put so much weight into this one number. I would like to see more state and local employment numbers, but I can't find a single location for that. With it broken down like that people can see if the numbers "feel right" for their state. Right now the 32k number is kicked out and people don't know if that means 32k jobs were created in Peroria, IL or across the country.