| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Sogobia" |
| Date: |
12 Jun 2004 05:41:08 PM |
| Object: |
Most of the jobs created in April didn't exist? |
WHAT ARE THEY SMOKING AT THE LABOR DEPT.?
By JOHN CRUDELE
May 11, 2004 -- DON'T get too excited about all those new jobs that were
supposed to have been created in April.
I'm not going to waste a lot of my precious space on this, but the bottom
line is that most of the 288,000 jobs that the Labor Department says were
created last month may not really exist.
They could be figments of statisticians' optimism.
Anyone who plodded through my column last Thursday knows I predicted that
job growth in April would be better than the 160,000 to 170,000 jobs that
the "pros" were anticipating.
But I also said, quite emphatically I hope, that the stronger growth would
be an illusion - the result of the Labor Department's computers making happy
predictions about seasonal job creation that could neither be verified nor
justified.
I'll explain one aspect.
Back in the March employment report, the government added 153,000 positions
to its revised total of 337,000 new jobs because it thought (but couldn't
prove) loads of new companies were being created in this economy.
That estimate comes from the Labor Department's "birth/death model." You can
look up these numbers on the Department's Web site.
As staggering as the assumption about new companies was in March, the Labor
Department got even more brazen in April.
Last Friday, it was disclosed that these imaginary jobs had been increased
by 117,000 to 270,000 for the latest month - because, I guess, the stat
jockeys got a vision from the gods of spring.
Without those extra 117,000 make-believe jobs, the total growth for April
would have been just 171,000 - sub-par for an economy that's supposed to be
growing at more than 4 percent a year, but right on the pros' targets.
Take away all 270,000 make-believe jobs and, well, you have the sort of
pessimism that the political pollsters are seeing.
If I was the suspicious type (and if I thought Washington was smart enough),
I'd suspect a nasty motive behind the sudden surge in these mystery jobs.
But for now, let's just acknowledge their existence.
Also keep in mind that the government doesn't distinguish between good
companies being created and, say, a guy doing consulting work out of his
basement because he can't find real work.
What does this new job announcement mean in the real world?
It means there will be more pressure on the financial markets, as we've seen
for a while but especially since last Thursday.
It also means that the Federal Reserve now has the excuse it needs to raise
interest rates in June (as I've said before would happen) and will probably
start regretting that move by the end of the summer.
And President Bush will probably give in to temptation and start crowing
about the economy, going against the mood, as captured by pollsters.
This will make him look as out of touch with reality as his father did.
* Press reports say they are thinking of removing a 9/11 plaque from the New
York Stock Exchange because it's unduly flattering to former Chairman *****
Grasso, but I hear they are also replacing all the round, shiny doorknobs in
the building.
It seems they remind too many people of the top of Grasso's head. (If you
have an "I hate *****" story, please send it to me.)
*
Here's some more bad news about Iraq.
A source in the intelligence community tells me that the U.N. oil embargo of
Saddam Hussein was worthless because Iraqi oil was being shipped all these
years to a Caribbean island called St. Eustatius, unloaded into onshore
tanks and then reloaded into U.S.-bound tanker ships.
The same switcheroo is being done with Iranian oil, I'm told.
Oh, and the source says Washington would rather nobody know about this.
http://www.nypost.com/business/23936.htm
--
A pattern of deception
A hard truth appears to have escaped the notice of the public and received
scant attention from the media: Bush is the first president in American
history to use deceptive propaganda as his main means of communications in
selling his policies. His pattern of deception continues unabated and in
direct conflict with the notion of the public's informed consent that is
central to American democracy.
Walter Williams is professor emeritus at the University of Washington's
Evans School of Public Affairs.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6378746.htm
.
|
|
| User: "" |
|
| Title: Re: Most of the jobs created in April didn't exist? |
12 Jun 2004 07:03:05 PM |
|
|
When are statistics dishonest ?
________________________________________________________________________________
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and the MISREPRESENTATION of statistics."
So when are statistics misrepresented ?
When the presentation is "tunnel vision".
Meaning that the full picture is not shown.
For example :
[1]
When only one geographic location is shown.
This type of presentation does not give the reader the opportunity
to compare the statistics with other geographic locations.
[2]
When only one period in time is shown.
This type of presentation does not give the reader the opportunity
to compare the statistics with other periods in time.
________________________________________________________________________________
.
|
|
|
| User: "InsuranceBroker" |
|
| Title: Re: Most of the jobs created in April didn't exist? |
12 Jun 2004 07:24:43 PM |
|
|
Subject: Re: Most of the jobs created in April didn't exist?
From:
Date: 6/12/2004 8:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id: <mb6nc09c5ce8rvfj8ljth7njpgt5dj4l4r@4ax.com>
When are statistics dishonest ?
It is easy to answer if they are government statistics. They are generally
never honest. The government produces crap to fit a definition that few to
none would agree upon. An example is the government decision to eliminate
hundres of thousands to millions with the way they count if someone is looking
for work. In most cases almost no one would agree with the way the government
does it. That is why they say so little about the way they collect and count
the numbers./
Doing Insurance business in the Garden State
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
Wednesday, April 20: 2 U.S. soldiers dead, 4 wounded in bomb blast
In April, Mitt Romney took a dig at Hillary Clinton's vision forchildren in America. He claimed that the "it takes a village to raise a child"concept was wrong. Instead, he said, "It takes a family."
America... leaderless since April, 2004, as Bush focuses totally on re-election campaign
USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll: Bush slides to 52%. Down 19 since April.
False And Fraudulent Claims Of Copyright (April 6, 2006)
74 American soldiers killed in Iraq in September! Highest since April.
Worship Service At Internet Church Of Christ For Week Of Sunday, April 23, 2006 Featuring The Topic "Eighteen Applications Of The Golden Rule In Everyday Life."
Monday, April 12: Three U.S. Marines killed in western Iraq
| Tuesday, April 6 update: New fighting kills 12 Marines, 20 Wounded in Al-Ramadi.
Tuesday, April 24: U.S. Marine killed in Al Anbar Province
Sunday, April 4 update: 7 U.S. soldiers killed, 24 wounded in Baghdad
Had the media acted in April 1997 we could have been spared Blair
Record of Iraq War Lies to Air April 25 on PBS
The Middle East After Arafat - Fareed Zakaria (Newsweek, april 9,2001)
Monday, April 16: 2 U.S. soldiers killed, 2 wounded in Iraq action
|
|
|
