Lies, Damned Lies and Government Jobs Data

Fox Business ^ | 5/2/12 | Elizabeth McDonald

[SoFloFreeper]

There is lots of talk about the "fiscal cliff" the U.S. faces at year end, as stimulus and tax cuts go away...

For 59 out of the last 60 weeks, the weekly jobless numbers have been revised, after the fact, always in the same direction: higher. That's unheard of...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the unemployment rate is dropping, and fell from 10% in October 2009 to 8.2% now. That’s got the White House and media pundits saying an economic recovery has taken place, and that the President’s stimulus bill, which cost more than $750 billion to date, has driven unemployment down towards 8% as promised.

However, the unemployment rate is the number of people out of work but who are actively looking. The government doesn’t count in that rate the now 6.3 million who have given up and stopped looking for work, but want jobs. That number has grown from 5.7 million in January 2009.

[SoFloFreeper]

Elizabeth does a decent job of showing how, basically, Obama and most of the (never curious) media are lying to Americans.

[Principled]

Here it is:

...the unemployment rate “rises to 14.5% if you factor back in those who’ve stopped looking for work but would re-enter if there were jobs, as well as part-time workers who would prefer full-time positions.

[KoRn]

An even worse stat is the number of the ‘working age’ population that isn’t in the labor force. I forget what it is exactly, but it’s horrific! I believe 30-40% aren’t working.

[Uncle Miltie]

"For 59 out of the last 60 weeks, the weekly jobless numbers have been revised, after the fact, always in the same direction: higher."

What are the odds that the numbers aren't cooked? That's calculable. The numbers ought to be revised either higher or lower at a 50% / 50% rate. Any single number greater or lesser than 50% has a 50% chance of being randomly generated.

So, if I recall my statistics correctly, we can do the following:

Throw out the one correction that was lower with one of the corrections that was higher. That leaves us with 58 corrections all in one direction. If each of those corrections, like the toss of a coin, has a 50% chance of turning up heads ("higher"), then we can multiply 50% by itself 58 times. I'll let my spreadsheet do the work:

Ah yes. Here are the odds that 58 corrections all happen in the same direction are by chance:

0.0000000000000003469%

[Uncle Miltie]

In other words, the odds that someone is cooking the books is 99.9999999999999999%.