Refuting the "Unemployment Conspiracy" Nonsense

[Toro]

Republicans who know WTF they are talking about are in bold red.

A good conspiracy theory is irrefutable. A bad one usually collapses when confronted by reality.

The claim by some supporters of Republican challenger Mitt Romney that President Barack Obama’s Chicago-based campaign doctored September’s unemployment figures for political gain fall into the second category, according to members of both parties who have served in the government’s economic data system.

Jack Welch, the former chief executive officer of General Electric Co. (GE), touched off an Internet-based frenzy yesterday when he suggested on Twitter that Obama’s team lowered the country’s unemployment rate to 7.8 percent to give the president a boost. “Unbelievable jobs numbers. . . these Chicago guys will do anything. . . can’t debate so change numbers,” he wrote. ...

During a television interview last night, when CNBC host Larry Kudlow said it was unrealistic to allege the White House tampered with the data, Welch tempered his words. ...

Economists, including one who worked for McCain, dismissed the very suggestion that U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics would, or even could, manipulate the data.

The people who compile the numbers “are professionals” and “do this as a career,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and the policy director for McCain’s 2008 campaign. “I have a lot of respect for them.” ...

Each month, federal agencies, staffed by career civil servants, compile the raw data that eventually become two jobs- day numbers: the unemployment rate and the total number of jobs added to the economy.

It begins on the Sunday of the week that has the 19th in it, with 2,000 Census Bureau workers knocking on 60,000 doors, asking residents if they were employed, or if they were seeking employment, in the last week, said Nancy Potok, the bureau’s associate director, in an interview on July 30.

The bureau has 20 days to complete the survey and send it to the BLS, which then has two or three days to provide the numbers to the Council of Economic Advisers, said Gary Steinberg, a BLS spokesman, in an Aug. 1 interview. Before transmitting the numbers to the CEA, the Census Bureau weights the data to adjust for non-answers and unresponsive households.

At the same time, the BLS is conducting the so-called establishment survey, by sending and receiving questionnaires to 486,000 work sites. The main question that separate survey seeks to answer: how many jobs the work sites had on their payrolls on the 12th of the month.

On the Thursday afternoon before Labor Department’s Friday release of the numbers, the BLS transmits both data sets to the Council of Economic Advisers, over a secure system. It then becomes the CEA chairman’s responsibility to provide the president with the numbers. All the data is transmitted over secure systems and it is often walked to the West Wing by the CEA chairman, Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s previous CEA chairman said in a Sept. 5 interview. ...

“There’s no politics that goes into these numbers at all,” [Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at Economic Outlook Group LLC] said. “The way the U.S. collects economic statistics is viewed around the world as the gold standard.”

“For sure, some conspiracy theorist will contend that the BLS is cooking the data for political reasons. Such theories are absolutely garbage,” said Ray Stone, managing director of Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey, in a note to clients. “The BLS never lets politics enter the data.” ...

“I don’t think they could manipulate it,” said [Keith] Hennessey, [Bush’s last director of the National Economic Council], who received the jobs reports on Thursday nights before their release when he was in government. “Too many people would have to be involved and they couldn’t coordinate that many people lying about the data.”

“It would be very difficult,” to manipulate numbers at the BLS, said Elaine Chao, U.S. Labor Secretary from 2001 to 2009.

Welch Conspiracy Theory on Jobs Data Not Tied to Reality - Bloomberg

 

[del]

pffft

you probably think obama was born in hawaii, too.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Republicans who know WTF they are talking about are in bold red.

A good conspiracy theory is irrefutable. A bad one usually collapses when confronted by reality.

The claim by some supporters of Republican challenger Mitt Romney that President Barack Obama’s Chicago-based campaign doctored September’s unemployment figures for political gain fall into the second category, according to members of both parties who have served in the government’s economic data system.

Jack Welch, the former chief executive officer of General Electric Co. (GE), touched off an Internet-based frenzy yesterday when he suggested on Twitter that Obama’s team lowered the country’s unemployment rate to 7.8 percent to give the president a boost. “Unbelievable jobs numbers. . . these Chicago guys will do anything. . . can’t debate so change numbers,” he wrote. ...

During a television interview last night, when CNBC host Larry Kudlow said it was unrealistic to allege the White House tampered with the data, Welch tempered his words. ...

Economists, including one who worked for McCain, dismissed the very suggestion that U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics would, or even could, manipulate the data.

The people who compile the numbers “are professionals” and “do this as a career,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and the policy director for McCain’s 2008 campaign. “I have a lot of respect for them.” ...

Each month, federal agencies, staffed by career civil servants, compile the raw data that eventually become two jobs- day numbers: the unemployment rate and the total number of jobs added to the economy.

It begins on the Sunday of the week that has the 19th in it, with 2,000 Census Bureau workers knocking on 60,000 doors, asking residents if they were employed, or if they were seeking employment, in the last week, said Nancy Potok, the bureau’s associate director, in an interview on July 30.

The bureau has 20 days to complete the survey and send it to the BLS, which then has two or three days to provide the numbers to the Council of Economic Advisers, said Gary Steinberg, a BLS spokesman, in an Aug. 1 interview. Before transmitting the numbers to the CEA, the Census Bureau weights the data to adjust for non-answers and unresponsive households.

At the same time, the BLS is conducting the so-called establishment survey, by sending and receiving questionnaires to 486,000 work sites. The main question that separate survey seeks to answer: how many jobs the work sites had on their payrolls on the 12th of the month.

On the Thursday afternoon before Labor Department’s Friday release of the numbers, the BLS transmits both data sets to the Council of Economic Advisers, over a secure system. It then becomes the CEA chairman’s responsibility to provide the president with the numbers. All the data is transmitted over secure systems and it is often walked to the West Wing by the CEA chairman, Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s previous CEA chairman said in a Sept. 5 interview. ...

“There’s no politics that goes into these numbers at all,” [Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at Economic Outlook Group LLC] said. “The way the U.S. collects economic statistics is viewed around the world as the gold standard.”

“For sure, some conspiracy theorist will contend that the BLS is cooking the data for political reasons. Such theories are absolutely garbage,” said Ray Stone, managing director of Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey, in a note to clients. “The BLS never lets politics enter the data.” ...

“I don’t think they could manipulate it,” said [Keith] Hennessey, [Bush’s last director of the National Economic Council], who received the jobs reports on Thursday nights before their release when he was in government. “Too many people would have to be involved and they couldn’t coordinate that many people lying about the data.”

“It would be very difficult,” to manipulate numbers at the BLS, said Elaine Chao, U.S. Labor Secretary from 2001 to 2009.

Welch Conspiracy Theory on Jobs Data Not Tied to Reality - Bloomberg

And people thought Colin Powell was a republican. I really don't care what party a person says they belong too. If what they say doesn't add up too reality, what they say is total bullshit.

 

[Avorysuds]

No one said they are lying... They are being dishonest. When the UE number goes down due to people falling off the ass end for months and months and months because of the way you count UE, that's a dishonest, it misrepresents the reality that we actually live under. People, the number who are UE’ed is more around 14-18% and going up.

 

[Toro]

Employers added a relatively modest 114,000 jobs in September, but the unemployment rate registered its biggest drop in nearly two years. What explains the disparity?

The answer lies in the way the two figures are calculated. The monthly payroll number—how many jobs are gained or added in a month—is based on a survey of about 141,000 businesses and government agencies. The unemployment rate and related statistics are based on an separate survey of about 60,000 individual households.
Related

The business survey is larger and generally more stable. ...

The household survey is more volatile. ... The survey's tally of people with jobs—based on counting the number of people who say they are working, rather than the business survey's count of employees ...

Despite the month-to-month disagreements, however, the two surveys line up well over the longer term. In fact, over the past year, they show almost identical jobs growth. That suggests the September household survey likely overstated the jump in employment, but the July and August surveys likely missed in the other direction. That is consistent with what the business survey is showing: slow, but relatively steady jobs growth.

Why Surveys Tell Two Stories - WSJ.com

 

[Toro]

No one said they are lying... They are being dishonest. When the UE number goes down due to people falling off the ass end for months and months and months because of the way you count UE, that's a dishonest, it misrepresents the reality that we actually live under. People, the number who are UE’ed is more around 14-18% and going up.

That's not why unemployment went down, and yes, Republicans here are saying that the numbers are rigged.

 

[Toro]

What has struck some doubters was the huge discrepancy between the gains in nonfarm payroll employment (114,000) and employment reported by the household survey, from which the unemployment rate is derived (873,000).

But such anomalies have happened before. In February '02, for example, the gap was even wider, with household employment up 737,000 and nonfarm payrolls down 146,000—and nobody cried foul.

Besides, all conspiracies are only as strong as their weakest link. If it really were common for the BLS to succumb to White House pressure to cook up numbers, wouldn't someone have snitched by now?

In 1971, President Richard Nixon did try to intimidate the BLS into reporting an unemployment rate he preferred. Convinced that a conspiracy of Jews was trying to undermine him, he had a few of them removed. But there's no evidence that the BLS succumbed to this treatment.

September Unemployment: No U Turn - Barrons.com

 

[Toro]

This didn't dawn on me until I read it, but it is certainly obvious and ironic to anyone who followed GE under Jack Welch.

Of all the people who have something to say about the BLS, none is more unintentionally ironic than former GE CEO Jack Welch. ...

GE’s revenues grew 385% under his watch, but the company’s market cap grew 4000%. How did that happen? GE increased earnings over the years, and with stunning regularity, managed a quarterly [earnings estimate] beat.

Indeed, it was too regular: After the 2000 crash, we learned of earnings manipulation and accounting shenanigans. The criticism was GE Capital acted as an opaque leveraged hedge fund that always be counted on to help GE beat by a penny. (GE eventually had to settle accounting fraud charges with the SEC).

So if anyone knows a thing or two about cooking the books, its GE’s Jack Welch.

GE’s Jack Welch Knows About Cooking the Books | The Big Picture

 

[PredFan]

No one said they are lying... They are being dishonest. When the UE number goes down due to people falling off the ass end for months and months and months because of the way you count UE, that's a dishonest, it misrepresents the reality that we actually live under. People, the number who are UE’ed is more around 14-18% and going up.

What's up with the penguin?

 

[PredFan]

Look, there are a lot of people who work at the BLS. One person could not all all of those households. One person could not call all of those businesses. The people who collect the data do not have to be dishonest. It's the person responsible for reporting the data, for pulling it together and making the determination what the number is.

Obama's cabinet member. The secretary of Labor.

The OP is quite naive if he believes what he posted.

 

[Toro]

Look, there are a lot of people who work at the BLS. One person could not all all of those households. One person could not call all of those businesses. The people who collect the data do not have to be dishonest. It's the person responsible for reporting the data, for pulling it together and making the determination what the number is.

Obama's cabinet member. The secretary of Labor.

The OP is quite naive if he believes what he posted.

Or, rather than a massive coverup by thousands of employees - which is what you're implying since the numbers are known by many people within the agency - highly biased partisans engage in confirmation bias and refuse to accept numbers which contradict their own beliefs and make things up regardless of the data, which they don't understand anyways.

I'll choose the latter.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Look, there are a lot of people who work at the BLS. One person could not all all of those households. One person could not call all of those businesses. The people who collect the data do not have to be dishonest. It's the person responsible for reporting the data, for pulling it together and making the determination what the number is.

Obama's cabinet member. The secretary of Labor.

The OP is quite naive if he believes what he posted.

All you need is a funnel to manipulate the numbers
A 1000 BLS workers are split up into 4 or 5 different groups to gather the information, you put people in charge of those groups to collect the information, that is where the funnel comes int to play, less people you can start manipulating the numbers, Then those people report the information to even less people. I doubt everybody that collects the numbers are in the loop all the way to where the labor department receives those numbers.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Look, there are a lot of people who work at the BLS. One person could not all all of those households. One person could not call all of those businesses. The people who collect the data do not have to be dishonest. It's the person responsible for reporting the data, for pulling it together and making the determination what the number is.

Obama's cabinet member. The secretary of Labor.

The OP is quite naive if he believes what he posted.

Or, rather than a massive coverup by thousands of employees - which is what you're implying since the numbers are known by many people within the agency - highly biased partisans engage in confirmation bias and refuse to accept numbers which contradict their own beliefs and make things up regardless of the data, which they don't understand anyways.

I'll choose the latter.

Not true not every BLS personal is in the loop. They would only have information on their data they collected.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

And of course had he UE rate gone up, republicans would perceive BLS staff as being beyond reproach.

 

[editec]

Employers added a relatively modest 114,000 jobs in September, but the unemployment rate registered its biggest drop in nearly two years. What explains the disparity?

The answer lies in the way the two figures are calculated. The monthly payroll number—how many jobs are gained or added in a month—is based on a survey of about 141,000 businesses and government agencies. The unemployment rate and related statistics are based on an separate survey of about 60,000 individual households.
Related

The business survey is larger and generally more stable. ...

The household survey is more volatile. ... The survey's tally of people with jobs—based on counting the number of people who say they are working, rather than the business survey's count of employees ...

Despite the month-to-month disagreements, however, the two surveys line up well over the longer term. In fact, over the past year, they show almost identical jobs growth. That suggests the September household survey likely overstated the jump in employment, but the July and August surveys likely missed in the other direction. That is consistent with what the business survey is showing: slow, but relatively steady jobs growth.

Why Surveys Tell Two Stories - WSJ.com

Sadly WSJ decided that one needs to subscribe to it to read this article.

Can you encapsulate the article for us?

 

[bigrebnc1775]

And of course had he UE rate gone up, republicans would perceive BLS staff as being beyond reproach.

I said at the beginning of the year the unemployment numbers would be down past 8% at election time only a partisan hack couldn't have seen that coming.

 

[mudwhistle]

Republicans who know WTF they are talking about are in bold red.

A good conspiracy theory is irrefutable. A bad one usually collapses when confronted by reality.

The claim by some supporters of Republican challenger Mitt Romney that President Barack Obama’s Chicago-based campaign doctored September’s unemployment figures for political gain fall into the second category, according to members of both parties who have served in the government’s economic data system.

Jack Welch, the former chief executive officer of General Electric Co. (GE), touched off an Internet-based frenzy yesterday when he suggested on Twitter that Obama’s team lowered the country’s unemployment rate to 7.8 percent to give the president a boost. “Unbelievable jobs numbers. . . these Chicago guys will do anything. . . can’t debate so change numbers,” he wrote. ...

During a television interview last night, when CNBC host Larry Kudlow said it was unrealistic to allege the White House tampered with the data, Welch tempered his words. ...

Economists, including one who worked for McCain, dismissed the very suggestion that U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics would, or even could, manipulate the data.

The people who compile the numbers “are professionals” and “do this as a career,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and the policy director for McCain’s 2008 campaign. “I have a lot of respect for them.” ...

Each month, federal agencies, staffed by career civil servants, compile the raw data that eventually become two jobs- day numbers: the unemployment rate and the total number of jobs added to the economy.

It begins on the Sunday of the week that has the 19th in it, with 2,000 Census Bureau workers knocking on 60,000 doors, asking residents if they were employed, or if they were seeking employment, in the last week, said Nancy Potok, the bureau’s associate director, in an interview on July 30.

The bureau has 20 days to complete the survey and send it to the BLS, which then has two or three days to provide the numbers to the Council of Economic Advisers, said Gary Steinberg, a BLS spokesman, in an Aug. 1 interview. Before transmitting the numbers to the CEA, the Census Bureau weights the data to adjust for non-answers and unresponsive households.

At the same time, the BLS is conducting the so-called establishment survey, by sending and receiving questionnaires to 486,000 work sites. The main question that separate survey seeks to answer: how many jobs the work sites had on their payrolls on the 12th of the month.

On the Thursday afternoon before Labor Department’s Friday release of the numbers, the BLS transmits both data sets to the Council of Economic Advisers, over a secure system. It then becomes the CEA chairman’s responsibility to provide the president with the numbers. All the data is transmitted over secure systems and it is often walked to the West Wing by the CEA chairman, Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s previous CEA chairman said in a Sept. 5 interview. ...

“There’s no politics that goes into these numbers at all,” [Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at Economic Outlook Group LLC] said. “The way the U.S. collects economic statistics is viewed around the world as the gold standard.”

“For sure, some conspiracy theorist will contend that the BLS is cooking the data for political reasons. Such theories are absolutely garbage,” said Ray Stone, managing director of Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey, in a note to clients. “The BLS never lets politics enter the data.” ...

“I don’t think they could manipulate it,” said [Keith] Hennessey, [Bush’s last director of the National Economic Council], who received the jobs reports on Thursday nights before their release when he was in government. “Too many people would have to be involved and they couldn’t coordinate that many people lying about the data.”

“It would be very difficult,” to manipulate numbers at the BLS, said Elaine Chao, U.S. Labor Secretary from 2001 to 2009.

Welch Conspiracy Theory on Jobs Data Not Tied to Reality - Bloomberg

Course they're not taking into consideration a totally corrupt administration.

I remember when everyone thought terrorism would never hit us in the U.S.

They thought the same way when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

If there is a will there is always a way. These numbers were all based on phone calls. Remember that.

Obamaphones.

 

[Toro]

Look, there are a lot of people who work at the BLS. One person could not all all of those households. One person could not call all of those businesses. The people who collect the data do not have to be dishonest. It's the person responsible for reporting the data, for pulling it together and making the determination what the number is.

Obama's cabinet member. The secretary of Labor.

The OP is quite naive if he believes what he posted.

Or, rather than a massive coverup by thousands of employees - which is what you're implying since the numbers are known by many people within the agency - highly biased partisans engage in confirmation bias and refuse to accept numbers which contradict their own beliefs and make things up regardless of the data, which they don't understand anyways.

I'll choose the latter.

Not true not every BLS personal is in the loop. They would only have information on their data they collected.

No, not everyone is in the loop. But the data is being complied and assessed by MAs and PhDs along the way, and if the input being compiled by highly intelligent professionals does not jive with the output, you'll hear about it soon enough.

So I'll believe the MAs and PhDs over extremely partisan people who don't understand the process and have a political axe to grind.

 

[Toro]

Republicans who know WTF they are talking about are in bold red.

A good conspiracy theory is irrefutable. A bad one usually collapses when confronted by reality.

The claim by some supporters of Republican challenger Mitt Romney that President Barack Obama’s Chicago-based campaign doctored September’s unemployment figures for political gain fall into the second category, according to members of both parties who have served in the government’s economic data system.

Jack Welch, the former chief executive officer of General Electric Co. (GE), touched off an Internet-based frenzy yesterday when he suggested on Twitter that Obama’s team lowered the country’s unemployment rate to 7.8 percent to give the president a boost. “Unbelievable jobs numbers. . . these Chicago guys will do anything. . . can’t debate so change numbers,” he wrote. ...

During a television interview last night, when CNBC host Larry Kudlow said it was unrealistic to allege the White House tampered with the data, Welch tempered his words. ...

Economists, including one who worked for McCain, dismissed the very suggestion that U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics would, or even could, manipulate the data.

The people who compile the numbers “are professionals” and “do this as a career,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and the policy director for McCain’s 2008 campaign. “I have a lot of respect for them.” ...

Each month, federal agencies, staffed by career civil servants, compile the raw data that eventually become two jobs- day numbers: the unemployment rate and the total number of jobs added to the economy.

It begins on the Sunday of the week that has the 19th in it, with 2,000 Census Bureau workers knocking on 60,000 doors, asking residents if they were employed, or if they were seeking employment, in the last week, said Nancy Potok, the bureau’s associate director, in an interview on July 30.

The bureau has 20 days to complete the survey and send it to the BLS, which then has two or three days to provide the numbers to the Council of Economic Advisers, said Gary Steinberg, a BLS spokesman, in an Aug. 1 interview. Before transmitting the numbers to the CEA, the Census Bureau weights the data to adjust for non-answers and unresponsive households.

At the same time, the BLS is conducting the so-called establishment survey, by sending and receiving questionnaires to 486,000 work sites. The main question that separate survey seeks to answer: how many jobs the work sites had on their payrolls on the 12th of the month.

On the Thursday afternoon before Labor Department’s Friday release of the numbers, the BLS transmits both data sets to the Council of Economic Advisers, over a secure system. It then becomes the CEA chairman’s responsibility to provide the president with the numbers. All the data is transmitted over secure systems and it is often walked to the West Wing by the CEA chairman, Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s previous CEA chairman said in a Sept. 5 interview. ...

“There’s no politics that goes into these numbers at all,” [Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at Economic Outlook Group LLC] said. “The way the U.S. collects economic statistics is viewed around the world as the gold standard.”

“For sure, some conspiracy theorist will contend that the BLS is cooking the data for political reasons. Such theories are absolutely garbage,” said Ray Stone, managing director of Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey, in a note to clients. “The BLS never lets politics enter the data.” ...

“I don’t think they could manipulate it,” said [Keith] Hennessey, [Bush’s last director of the National Economic Council], who received the jobs reports on Thursday nights before their release when he was in government. “Too many people would have to be involved and they couldn’t coordinate that many people lying about the data.”

“It would be very difficult,” to manipulate numbers at the BLS, said Elaine Chao, U.S. Labor Secretary from 2001 to 2009.

Welch Conspiracy Theory on Jobs Data Not Tied to Reality - Bloomberg

Course they're not taking into consideration a totally corrupt administration.

I remember when everyone thought terrorism would never hit us in the U.S.

They thought the same way when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

If there is a will there is always a way. These numbers were all based on phone calls. Remember that.

Obamaphones.

If you have any evidence whatsoever that the BLS is corrupt and cooking the books, please offer it. Otherwise, it's just silly speculative conjecture that we can put into the trash bin with the twoofers and birfers and should be ignored.

 

[mudwhistle]

Republicans who know WTF they are talking about are in bold red.



Welch Conspiracy Theory on Jobs Data Not Tied to Reality - Bloomberg

Course they're not taking into consideration a totally corrupt administration.

I remember when everyone thought terrorism would never hit us in the U.S.

They thought the same way when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

If there is a will there is always a way. These numbers were all based on phone calls. Remember that.

Obamaphones.

If you have any evidence whatsoever that the BLS is corrupt and cooking the books, please offer it. Otherwise, it's just silly speculative conjecture that we can put into the trash bin with the twoofers and birfers and should be ignored.

Well, for one some of them donated to Obama. I don't think that's enough on it's own but we have proof that members of the Obama Administration have been putting pressure on anyone that dares to be honest or doesn't play by Obama's rules. Threats being made over the phone, bribes being floated. Promises for high government positions if they just play ball.

The organization that supports Obama is huge. It's very plausible to assume that the timing of this isn't accidental at all.

Unfortunately it would take an investigation with results to be released after the election of course.