Spin: 403,000 new unemployed people is "good news"

[pinqy]

Nice trick. I said "new hires." I guess we can debate about what that means also. Go ahead.

Those were new hires. I don't know what other definition of "hires" you could mean. That's gross, so that certainly doesn't mean total employment went up that much...there were 3,792,000 total seperations (less than half were layoffs).

The government could try some automation and a data system that can handle it.

They do.

We do have to pay these people we hire. Those paychecks have to be recorded. My bank can do a payroll check for a new hire today with ease.

For 150 million people at the same time? I don't think so. And, every March, BLS does do a full count of non-farm payroll employment from UI records. It takes months even with automation.

And that's just non-farm payroll. How would you handle the self employed and family businesses and under-the-table work?

And UNemployement? How would you get that quicker? Especially new entrants and re-entrants.

I'm not sure what you're asking. Please clarify.

You said you haven't seen any press on new hirings, plants etc that would give more than 400,000 for the week. That implies that if there were that large a number of hires, you would see it in the press. Well, in February there were nearly 4 million new hires, so you surely can point to where in the press you would have seen those. If you can't show it, then you have to admit that just not seeing that many hires in the press doesn't mean they didn't occur.

Where do I start? Ok, it's done by SURVEY. What is the margin of error for these surveys?

Which survey and which measure? It varies....The UE rate is about+-.2 percentage points, so the UE rate is between 8.6 and 9.0. That's at 90% confidence. To compare, Gallup's unemployment rate error is +-.7 percentage points. For employment and unemployment levels, it's somewhere around .5% and 2.5% depending on the series. You can calculate the standard errors yourself using the tables in http://www.bls.gov/cps/eetech_methods.pdf

Total unemployment has not been going down, people are being administratively dropped out of the labor force due to a political need to show some improvement.

You can only administratively drop out people from administrative numbers. Since there are no admin numbers for total employment, you can't have admin drops. And if you look at the last few months, you'll see that the Labor Force has been increasing, not decreasing. Source: BLS

March 2010 - 153,660
March 2011 - 153,022

Where's the increase?

March 2010 to March 2011 is not "the last few months." Ok, so maybe Jan-March is stretching it a bit for "last few" as well, but it is an upturn.

And you haven't addressed the question of "admin drops" for non-admin data. How does that work, again?

 

[pinqy]

The Obamanoids got all excited about the March BLS report which shows less than 300K new jobs for the entire month (most of them temp jobs at that).

Compare that with 400K more people filing for unemployment in One Week.

216k NET change in jobs. 400k more people filing in one week is GROSS and does not consider people who got jobs.

 

[pinqy]

To clarify, I'm certainly NOT saying the gov't numbers are absolutely 100% correct with no issues at all. That would be impossible. I almost never discuss the actual issues/difficulties because it's hard enough just refuting all the bogus complaints. And there's really not much way around the actual issues....homeless are excluded, not by design, but because they're too hard to count. The sample size is only adequate, but it would cost too much to increase it. I wish BLS would publish the margins of error so I wouldn't have to calculate them myself. The margins of error for change are usually maddeningly high (Not in Labor Force change for Feb to Mar was -239,000 +-412,137) but there's no way around that, and BLS is usually good at mentioning (though they don't draw much attention to it) when the change is not statistically significant.

 

[editec]

If you had been in a plane dropping toward the earth at a rate of 1000 feet per minute and you somehow manage to get its rate of decent to 500 feet per minute, you are still dropping to the earth, but you might also take heart in knowing that you've given yourself more time to further correct your flightpath. Hell you might even be tempted think of your efforts as a "good thing"

That isn't really all that difficult to understand, now, is it?

 

[asterism]

If you had been in a plane dropping toward the earth at a rate of 1000 feet per minute and you somehow manage to get its rate of decent to 500 feet per minute, you are still dropping to the earth, but you might also take heart in knowing that you've given yourself more time to further correct your flightpath. Hell you might even be tempted think of your efforts as a "good thing"

That isn't really all that difficult to understand, now, is it?

I suppose that depends on the results. It makes no difference if you still crash and burn now does it? At what cost is that extra second worth since we have to pay beforehand? $1 Trillion?

 

[asterism]

To clarify, I'm certainly NOT saying the gov't numbers are absolutely 100% correct with no issues at all. That would be impossible. I almost never discuss the actual issues/difficulties because it's hard enough just refuting all the bogus complaints. And there's really not much way around the actual issues....homeless are excluded, not by design, but because they're too hard to count. The sample size is only adequate, but it would cost too much to increase it. I wish BLS would publish the margins of error so I wouldn't have to calculate them myself. The margins of error for change are usually maddeningly high (Not in Labor Force change for Feb to Mar was -239,000 +-412,137) but there's no way around that, and BLS is usually good at mentioning (though they don't draw much attention to it) when the change is not statistically significant.

I appreciate your position so I want to clarify. I think the problem is in how leading indicators based on incomplete data are used by political ideologues to play in the margins. Here is the only chart that matters to me:

The "adults in charge" got it wrong. The results did not materialize. This is from the same campaign that said 7% unemployment was despicable and they said they could improve if we just let them do their thing.

A decline in the unemployment rate from 10% (as measured and calculated by the BLS) is not an improvement. It's just a slower rate of things getting worse. Get unemployment below 7% using existing methodology and we can call this a recovery. Until then we have a very huge problem of systemic pessimism. The longer we sit above 7% the more acceptable it becomes to be able-bodied and unemployed. Some are even calling for a wholesale change in the entire system, one that automatically puts significant world changing growth out of reach and creates a permanent underclass.

That's the problem with whitewashing the continued bad news, it masks just how bad the news really is for future opportunity. Will we ever see 5% unemployment again? Does that matter to you?

 

[Wicked Jester]

A decline in initial UI claims is not getting worse at a slower rate. Initial UI claims is gross, not net.

Does'nt matter... its still not good news.

But it's not bad news either. Claims were much higher every week last year. They've been lower earlier this year, but they're not back up to last year's numbers. So overall...meh.

WTF are you talking about, "it's not bad news"?

Anybody losing jobs is bad fuckin' news.

I'm sick of these damn Obamabot apologist spin masters.

This country is in the shits. Unemployment is bleak. We've just been downgraded by S&P, which is the ultimate indication of pending turmoil.......There is nothing positive going on. States are going down the fucking tubes. Here in Cali, businesses are fleeing in droves, thanks to asinine liberal policies, taxation and regulations. Same goes for Illinois. State politicians who try and do something to aleviate their bloated debts and deficits, are villified when god forbid it involves taking something from any beloved liberal entity, like ridiculous public union employee benefits.......we have an inept president who is more concerned with declaring for a run, and getting his sorry ass out on the campaign trail to give more of his substance lacking, hopey changey BS speeches, than he is in addressing this country's problems.

We are fucked!