The United States Department of Labor... Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is "fudging" the numbers and NOBODY is reporting it! What will happen Next Month? Adjusting an additional 50,000 lost jobs in June and July and nobody said a word...
Here is the paragraph half way down the monthly
Employment Situation Report for reference:
"The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from -443,000 to -463,000, and the change for July was revised from -247,000 to -276,000."
So, already bad numbers, get worse and everyone is kept in the dark... 50,000 worse than reported... Now statistically this number is not that significant unless you really get into rounding rules and significant digits, but if the 14.9 million plus these new would create a rounding to say 15 million... NOW the rate jumps and THAT is bad news (Do we really want to know JUST HOW BAD THINGS ARE?) Let's put that in perspective... another 20,000 to 30,000 in the wrong direction means 9.7 becomes 9.8!
It appears that BLS is changing number fairly regularly and so far this year to the tune of 59,000 worse than initially reported month over month. Now in the grand scheme of things what does this really mean:
They report a NUMBER for August of un-employment at 9.7% the media reports that, Wall Street reacts, Obama says he "saved or created" yadda, yadda, yadda...
Let us forget that the average number of weeks un-employed has been over 20 since March 2009 and is now at 25 (7 weeks longer than last year and the highest level since at least 1999)
Discouraged Workers added takes us to 10.1
Discouraged and marginally attached added takes us to 11.0
Discouraged, marginally attached and part time is a whopping 16.8 (OMG!)
Here are a few ideas:
- DONT REPORT A NUMBER until you can stand behind it
- Stop sugar coating
- Stop placing this information so far down the page or other links we cant find it in 5 seconds
- Report each of the above percentages in a single table for ease of reference...
Like this:
| Official |
Official + DW |
Official + DW + MA |
Official + DW + MA + PT |
| 9.7% |
10.1% |
11.0% |
16.8% |
I have a better IDEA! I am going to create a forum thread that will report this FOR YOU! (You can subscribe to our RSS feed to get it or bookmark
this link to view the updated information each month after they release new numbers! (4th day of the month usually)
I wanted to get some background, so I went back to review the entire year of 2009 an here is what I found:
Jan 2009:
"The total nonfarm employment level or March 2008 was revised downward by 89,000 (17,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis). The previously published level for December 2008 was revised downward by 172,000 (311,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis)."
-261,000 (-328,000 seasonally adjusted) (2008)
Feb 2009:
No data changes reported...
Mar 2009:
No data changes reported...
Apr 2009:
"The change in total nonfarm employment for February was revised from -651,000
to -681,000, and the change for March was revised from -663,000 to -699,000.
Monthly revisions result from additional sample reports and the monthly recalculation of seasonal factors."
-60,000
May 2009:
No data changes reported...
Jun 2008:
"The change in total nonfarm employment for April was revised from
-504,000 to -519,000, and the change for May was revised from -345,000
to -322,000."
+8,000 (WOW this was at least a positive number!)
Jul 2009:
"The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised
from -322,000 to -303,000, and the change for June was revised from -
467,000 to -443,000."
+43,000 (WOW another positive number! - But why adjust an adjusted number for May?)
Aug 2009:
"The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised
from -443,000 to -463,000, and the change for July was revised from
-247,000 to -276,000."
-50,000 (With June adjusted yet again, back to almost were it was before... odd)
2009 to Date Changes
-59,000 NET to date changes