Monday, January 13, 2014

More Tampering With The Unemployment Report?

In September 2012, just before the election, there were obvious inconsistencies in the monthly Employment Situation Report and the surprising drop in the unemployment rate that caused people to suspect someone of cooking-the-books. In fact, there were a number of chefs in the old Census Bureau's kitchen who were busy cooking and serving up a very nice pre-election cake for the President (see below).

Now, based on Friday's jobs report, it appears that the chefs were at it again.

The only way to lower the number of unemployed is for an unemployed worker to either find a job or just give up looking for work.  Friday's report said that 74,000 found work and 347,000 left the workforce because they were no longer counted as looking for work; a combined total of 341,000 that are no longer unemployed.  Yet, the report reflected a drop of 490,000:



Obviously, there is a 69,000 unaccounted for error in the number of those now being unemployed; and, I think, for political reasons.  My guess is that the "unaccounted" are being used to hide the fact that even more workers left the workforce than the 347,000 that were stated in the report.  While the 347,000 is bad enough, another 69,000, or a total 416,000, would look even more horrible; at least politically.

God only knows how much of the rest of the report is using "fuzzy" math.


References:

Census 'faked' 2012 Election Jobs Report: http://nypost.com/2013/11/18/census-faked-2012-election-jobs-report/

December 2013 Employment Report, Table A: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm

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