Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Jobs Figures: Government Just Making It Up As It Goes Along

Want to know why it's impossible to find a job, despite the fact the government reported 217,000 new jobs created last month and an unemployment rate that has finally fallen below 9%?

Maybe it's because they're just making shit up. John Crudele writes on employment/unemployment for the New York Post, and he blows the lid off the scam:


Early this month Labor reported that 216,000 new jobs were created in March. It was better than Wall Street expected

But the figure included 117,000 jobs that the department thinks, but can't prove, were created by newly formed companies that might not even exist. In fact, the department is getting so optimistic about the labor market that it increased this imaginary job count from just 81,000 in March, 2010.

....the spring always causes the Labor Department to goose its job-creation numbers. And maybe sometime in the future this process will be warranted. But during 2009 and 2010 these springtime assumptions -- which are officially called the Birth/Death Model by Labor -- led to major errors in the annual job count.

The next three months should be doozies. In April 2010, the Labor Department guessed that 188,000 jobs were created by these newly formed, maybe nonexistent companies; last May's total job number was jacked up by a 215,000 guess, and June got an artificial boost of 147,000 jobs.

This year, Labor will likely be inserting even bigger faux job totals for each of those three months.

In other words, you still might not be able to get a job in the real world, but there should be plenty of fake jobs for the newspapers to write about and the politicians to brag about in speeches...


Those employed in the media business will trumpet these numbers as proof of the Greatness of The One, and will demand his re-election. For every other American, either looking for a job, or trying to change jobs, or trying to keep their businesses open one more month, well..they will know that statistics lie.

Just like politicians. And the media.


UPDATE: Yeah, it all reminds me of Chet from Weird Science:

I'm gonna tell Mom and Dad everything. I'm even considering makin' up some shit!"

This, by the way, is what happens when you "make up some shit"...right, Chet?

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