Cooking the unemployment numbers???

[Meister]

The economists in that are in the BLS are not pOlitical appointees and have worked there with previous administrations. You really think that if Obama was telling them to fudge the numbers somebody would have come out by now?

Hilda Solis, an Obama appointee is the current boss. Besides, they know better than anyone if they open their mouths and get themselves fired, no one else is hiring.

You mean someone in the BLS wouldn't become a whistleblower and become a hero to almost half the population and become a celebrity overnight. He or she would not tell just to keep their job? Riiiight ........that sounds plausible.

Now you're creating your own scenario.

 

[Dutch]

Hilda Solis, an Obama appointee is the current boss. Besides, they know better than anyone if they open their mouths and get themselves fired, no one else is hiring.

You mean someone in the BLS wouldn't become a whistleblower and become a hero to almost half the population and become a celebrity overnight. He or she would not tell just to keep their job? Riiiight ........that sounds plausible.

Now you're creating your own scenario.

He just said they wouldn't tell to keep their jobs. My post was meant to be sarcastic.

 

[Sallow]

Even Morning Joe thinks so........

Morning Joe

Maybe they were cooked. By Republicans in congress to make the President look bad.

Oh wait..guess that never entered anyone's mind..eh?

 

[kaz]

Even Morning Joe thinks so........

Morning Joe

Maybe they were cooked. By Republicans in congress to make the President look bad.

Oh wait..guess that never entered anyone's mind..eh?

Bureaucrats, who work for Obama cooked the books for Romney. Got it. One question, why do you object to being called "Swallow" again?

 

[Murf76]

The unemployment numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS is under the Department of Labor. The Department of Labor is run by the Secretary of Labor....an Obama Cabinet Appointee.

'nuff said right there.

The economists in that are in the BLS are not pOlitical appointees and have worked there with previous administrations. You really think that if Obama was telling them to fudge the numbers somebody would have come out by now?

Actually, if you go back and look at the weekly numbers, they all have been revised downward the week after. Having said that......the numbers are reported and the MSM then prints those numbers....the next week the actual numbers are pretty much buried in a report. So....who knows what is going on? I just find it strange that the left does no critical thinking on this, and because it's their party of choice will accept anything positive....truth or not.

I wouldn't call it "strange". I'd call it LYING.

 

[LadyGunSlinger]

omg.. Too funny!! Libruls and their FUZZY MATH. Get your butt CREAMED, DEMOLISHED in debate and throw out numbers that even Harry Reid's big toe could calculate correctly.

 

[PredFan]

The unemployment numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS is under the Department of Labor. The Department of Labor is run by the Secretary of Labor....an Obama Cabinet Appointee.

'nuff said right there.

The economists in that are in the BLS are not pOlitical appointees and have worked there with previous administrations. You really think that if Obama was telling them to fudge the numbers somebody would have come out by now?

How many people does it take to fudge the numbers? Oh yeah, one, the person reporting them.

 

[PredFan]

Even Morning Joe thinks so........

Morning Joe

Maybe they were cooked. By Republicans in congress to make the President look bad.

Oh wait..guess that never entered anyone's mind..eh?

Um, I have a question, how does a drop in the UE rate hurt obama?

 

[techieny]

This WILL be exploited!

 

[LadyGunSlinger]

My my my.. Look what we just learned about the Economists over at the Labor Bureau..

http://freebeacon.com/meet-the-obama-donors-at-the-bls/

 

[Dutch]

The unemployment numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS is under the Department of Labor. The Department of Labor is run by the Secretary of Labor....an Obama Cabinet Appointee.

'nuff said right there.

The economists in that are in the BLS are not pOlitical appointees and have worked there with previous administrations. You really think that if Obama was telling them to fudge the numbers somebody would have come out by now?

How many people does it take to fudge the numbers? Oh yeah, one, the person reporting them.

My god, you are an idiot. So with all the people working for the BLS, who by the way are not political appointees, the person reporting the numbers fudge them? This is Washington moron, where leaks are a daily occurrence. Can you honestly say team Obama would risk it all on a stupid stunt like this? He was beaten in the debate, but Romney at best will only get a three percent bump.

 

[lukelk]

I am copy/paste of my last post on another thread, same topic.................................

I have to ask some questions, then I will give the answers.

So why is it wrong to wonder whether the BLS stats have been fudged?

I’ll give you three answers, in order of how convincing I find them.

First, if you know and understand the BLS and its structure — its statutory structure and its employment structure — you understand this simply isn’t how things happen. The BLS is independent of the Department of Labor. If you go to the BLS website, you won’t even find a picture of the Secretary of Labor there. It’s completely firewalled.

The one exception to this would be the Commissioner of the BLS. The president appoints a BLS commissioner, but for most of this administration it’s been a Republican. When his term ran out, Congress refused to confirm Obama’s appointee. So the current commissioner is in fact a career guy from within BLS, and if you know the institution at all, the BLS is an institution of nerds, by nerds.

So you could even argue that Republicans have protected the BLS from political influence by refusing to confirm an Obama appointee?

Those would be your words, not mine!

But there is literally not a political appointee in the building. Furthermore, the process involves so many staff, and the culture of independence is one of, if not the most, deep-seated value within the organization. The problem with the conspiracy theory is that there are so many staff who work on the numbers in various stages that such a conspiracy would be pretty much implausible. Were one to even attempt to do that there would be so many whistleblowers that you would have heard about it already.

I know these people, I’ve seen how they work, I know the culture — it’s unthinkable.

Secondly: Who believes the numbers are being manipulated? Certainly you could look at your twitter feed and Fox news and worry about it right now, but sophisticated players clearly don’t. Watch what happened to the stock market — if there was something wrong with the numbers that wingnuts on fringe blogs could figure out, presumably savvy financial market traders would have figured the same thing out as well. But savvy financial market traders are clearly trading as if this morning’s report was good news. Very good news. So these people have to be claiming that not only is there a conspiracy but that they are smarter and more aware of it than Goldman Sachs and various other savvy financial market traders.

And the third argument — which I find the least convincing, but it’s at least worth mentioning — is if you were going to fiddle the numbers, this isn’t how you would do it. There’s a strong counterargument that Obama has actually been somewhat unlucky. The BLS discovered two weeks ago that they had been undercounting jobs growth in the previous year by 32,000 a month. So Obama could have had much much stronger headlines for each month of the previous year. Would the president have wanted such dire headlines? Quite clearly, no. And if you were going to manipulate anything, what you would manipulate would be the headline payroll number, which was 114,000 — bang on expectations.



So what explains all the revisions? Last month’s and July’s payroll numbers both got big upward revisions. Where do these new numbers come from?

The payroll number literally comes from a survey of firms. The BLS asks them how many people on your payroll, and some firms just get around to filling out their surveys late, and send them in late. So what we’ve learned here is that there are a bunch of firms over the last few months which were basically too busy hiring people to fill in their forms on time. This is a fairly standard cyclical response — you also see it when firing becomes a really big issue — sometimes firms are too busy firing people.


I hope you enjoy the read, and I welcome debate with facts in return.

 

[kaz]

My god, you are an idiot. So with all the people working for the BLS, who by the way are not political appointees, the person reporting the numbers fudge them?

My god, you are an idiot. So you don't see why people who are career bureaucrats would be as biased towards the party of big government as political appointees? Dude, buy a clue...

 

[lukelk]

not a response that is factual. please bring facts to the table with a real argument///////////////////////NEXT

 

[Dutch]

I am copy/paste of my last post on another thread, same topic.................................

I have to ask some questions, then I will give the answers.

So why is it wrong to wonder whether the BLS stats have been fudged?

I’ll give you three answers, in order of how convincing I find them.

First, if you know and understand the BLS and its structure — its statutory structure and its employment structure — you understand this simply isn’t how things happen. The BLS is independent of the Department of Labor. If you go to the BLS website, you won’t even find a picture of the Secretary of Labor there. It’s completely firewalled.

The one exception to this would be the Commissioner of the BLS. The president appoints a BLS commissioner, but for most of this administration it’s been a Republican. When his term ran out, Congress refused to confirm Obama’s appointee. So the current commissioner is in fact a career guy from within BLS, and if you know the institution at all, the BLS is an institution of nerds, by nerds.

So you could even argue that Republicans have protected the BLS from political influence by refusing to confirm an Obama appointee?

Those would be your words, not mine!

But there is literally not a political appointee in the building. Furthermore, the process involves so many staff, and the culture of independence is one of, if not the most, deep-seated value within the organization. The problem with the conspiracy theory is that there are so many staff who work on the numbers in various stages that such a conspiracy would be pretty much implausible. Were one to even attempt to do that there would be so many whistleblowers that you would have heard about it already.

I know these people, I’ve seen how they work, I know the culture — it’s unthinkable.

Secondly: Who believes the numbers are being manipulated? Certainly you could look at your twitter feed and Fox news and worry about it right now, but sophisticated players clearly don’t. Watch what happened to the stock market — if there was something wrong with the numbers that wingnuts on fringe blogs could figure out, presumably savvy financial market traders would have figured the same thing out as well. But savvy financial market traders are clearly trading as if this morning’s report was good news. Very good news. So these people have to be claiming that not only is there a conspiracy but that they are smarter and more aware of it than Goldman Sachs and various other savvy financial market traders.

And the third argument — which I find the least convincing, but it’s at least worth mentioning — is if you were going to fiddle the numbers, this isn’t how you would do it. There’s a strong counterargument that Obama has actually been somewhat unlucky. The BLS discovered two weeks ago that they had been undercounting jobs growth in the previous year by 32,000 a month. So Obama could have had much much stronger headlines for each month of the previous year. Would the president have wanted such dire headlines? Quite clearly, no. And if you were going to manipulate anything, what you would manipulate would be the headline payroll number, which was 114,000 — bang on expectations.



So what explains all the revisions? Last month’s and July’s payroll numbers both got big upward revisions. Where do these new numbers come from?

The payroll number literally comes from a survey of firms. The BLS asks them how many people on your payroll, and some firms just get around to filling out their surveys late, and send them in late. So what we’ve learned here is that there are a bunch of firms over the last few months which were basically too busy hiring people to fill in their forms on time. This is a fairly standard cyclical response — you also see it when firing becomes a really big issue — sometimes firms are too busy firing people.


I hope you enjoy the read, and I welcome debate with facts in return.

My god, you are an idiot. So with all the people working for the BLS, who by the way are not political appointees, the person reporting the numbers fudge them?

My god, you are an idiot. So you don't see why people who are career bureaucrats would be as biased towards the party of big government as political appointees? Dude, buy a clue...

There are no conservatives working for the BLS or for any government agency? If you believe that Romney is in trouble.

 

[kaz]

There are no conservatives working for the BLS or for any government agency? If you believe that Romney is in trouble.

If one conservative is working for government, then we can trust anything the government tells us. Noted. Now I'm going to make good use of this, you'll hear the flush shortly...

 

[Londoner]

My god, you are an idiot. So you don't see why people who are career bureaucrats would be as biased towards the party of big government as political appointees? Dude, buy a clue...

The fudge is much larger. The real unemployment number has always been much larger than either party admits.

As I tell most talk radio partisans. The problem isn't with the party you don't trust - rather, it's with the party you do trust.

We know the Left expands government and fudges numbers because our news sources tell us every day.

What we never hear is how much Big Government Conservatism spends. And fudges. Reagan doubled Carter's deficits, spending, and size of Government. Same with Bush in relation to Clinton.

Reagan passed the largest amnesty bill in this country's history and the Bushies re-jiggered the unemployment calculation twice to add part-timers into the full employment numbers.

Be careful trusting government. Your problem isn't your justifiable fear over the Left, it's your deep trust of the Right. Be very careful with government son. Your inability to question your own party is killing us.

 

[kaz]

As I tell most talk radio partisans. The problem isn't with the party you don't trust - rather, it's with the party you do trust.

The DC bureaucracy is always strongly Democratic. Republican appointees at the top don't change that.

Be careful trusting government. Your problem isn't your justifiable fear over the Left, it's your deep trust of the Right. Be very careful with government son. Your inability to question your own party is killing us.

I'm a libertarian who trusts government and the right? Do tell...

 

[longknife]

Here's an interesting blog post I just came across:

Was that a good jobs report or a bad one?
by Texan99
It may have been naive to expected an un-jimmied jobs report this close to the election, but even by the loose standards we've learned to apply, this one is a doozy. Somehow, we added fewer jobs than are needed to keep pace with a growing population, but the unemployment rate took a dive to 7.8%, the first time in 43 months it's been below 8%. OK, you can get there by driving a phenomenal number of people out of the workforce, I guess, but the numbers still don't add up. We added 114,000 non-farm jobs but lost 456,000 unemployed people, while the household survey showed that the number of people with jobs rose by 873,000 (seasonally adjusted) -- the highest one-month increase in 29 years. It seems that the latter number includes 582,000 part-time jobs accepted by workers who were seeking part-time work but taking what they could get. Total "multiple jobs holders" rose by 183,000.

Zero Hedge is having some trouble with the numbers. Here's an interesting coincidence, for instance: the household survey figure is 873,000 jobs, of which 582,000 are part-time, which is precisely 2/3. Sound a bit like a plugged number?

I'm totally confused, but I take it that the unemployment number uses the household-survey jobs (873,000) instead of what Zero Hedge calls the "establishment" jobs number, which was the 114,000 figure. Also, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has unexpectedly revised upward the disappointing jobs figures for the last three months.

Well, I just hope the jobs picture is turning around, and these aren't simply numbers that will be quietly revised downwards later, per the usual practice.

My problem is, just what, where, and who is filling all these jobs. Are they people working out of their homes? Or temporary/part-time? If so, how can this be a sign of an improving economy?

 

[RoadVirus]

If, by some chance these numbers wern't cooked, it still begs the question: How come it took Obama so f-ing long to get us back under 8%? His $800 billion pork-filled stimulus was suppose to get us here years ago (according to him). So technically, he's still a failure.