2008-05-04

Employment figures in the US manipulated as well?

According to Karl Denninger from Market Ticker, last week's employment figures in the US could also have been manipulated to look better than the actual ones:
The employment number (which The Fed had, by the way) came out and its better than expected - but negative.

Why not down huge? Government hiring. Lots of it. Oh, and a "Birth/Death" adjustment of over a quarter of a million jobs - fictional jobs, I argue.

"Birth/Death" is a model attempt to count small businesses that otherwise don't get counted, and either die or are born. Let me ask you - drive around your town - are small businesses going under or starting up? On balance.

Well, the BLS says they are starting up to the tune of over 250,000 jobs in the last month alone. Do you believe it?

Then let's add that we now have 306,000 people who are now working part-time for "economic reasons." This, by the way, are people who were full-time employed and are now part-time. 306,000. Oh, and that's 849,000 people more than the same time last year. And average weekly earnings were down.
And also, according to Anthony Cherniawski from The Practical Investor, LLC
The press headline reads, “ Nonfarm payrolls down 20,000; unemployment rate unexpectedly falls.” Folks, these numbers have been massaged to get the “right” outcome.

For example, in April, the number of persons working part time for economic reasons increased by 306,000 to 5.2 million. This level was 849,000 higher than in April 2007. These individuals indicated that they were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. 5.2 million workers comprise 3.8% of the alleged workforce.

Another example is the CES Birth/Death Model, which added 267.000 fictitious jobs to the employment data. The reason I say fictitious is the way they are distributed. For example, the model suggests that 83,000 jobs were added in Leisure and Hospitality, 72,000 jobs were added to Professional and Business Services and 45,000 jobs were added to the Construction Sector.

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