Posted on 03/04/2012 9:25:54 PM PST by Bobbys1963
I do not know why Limbaugh says that.
I do know that the BLS household survey (Current Population Survey) is used to develop the unemployment rate.
The article goes on to say
The very weak recovery means the official unemployment rate is an unreliable barometer of the labor market. People are only counted as unemployed if they have been actively looking for work in the past four weeks. It is good news when the number of unemployed falls due to more hires. It is not so good if the number falls due to people giving up looking for work.
That's true because actual hires come from the establishment survey of 400,000 businesses.
I say that there are no questions on the household survey that ask "Are you a marginally attached worker?" Instead the computer determines that by the answers to the survey of 60,000 households -- and I believe that.. how the computer interprets can be adjusted. THUS I believe that the numbers can be and in fact are manipulated by all administrations since this "feature" was added, I think in the first Clinton term.
BTW, some argue that the establishment survey does not catch some workers such as "start up" businesses but the household does catch those workers. OK -- that was a huge debate during the Bush recovery -- but I believe that the household counts someone as working even though there is no income such as someone claiming to be a contractor but who does not have a contract or someone working in a family-owned business but not being paid.
That's more shenanigans.. possibly. The Current Population Survey determined somehow that there were far more people in the over-55 category than heretofore thought. So an adjustment was made for the beginning of 2012. Some one-million-plus were moved to the over-55 category and since the over-55 category has a larger "not in the labor force" rate many of those one-million-plus were dropped from the "looking for work" category thus lowering the unemployment rate.
BTW, that 2012 adjustment was the largest ever.. the second largest was in election year 2000 also a time when the incumbent administration was Democrat and the economy was in sharp decline.
During the Clinton administration, the survey excluded inner cities populations, thereby lowering the unemployment counts. At the end of his term, Clinton then had inner city populations thrown back in, which made Bush look bad.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Obama were doing the same thing.
God bless you,
OV
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