Obama's meaningless data

Reader comment on: Peter Ferrara on Obama

Submitted by Fast Eddie (United States), Aug 4, 2012 10:45

Yesterday the Obama administration boasted that the economy added over 160,000 jobs in July but gave no context or background for that data. In fact, the economy LOST jobs last month and the figure that was released was derived by taking the actual job losses and adding a 'seasonal adjustment' of 377,000 new jobs and adding a further 52,000 jobs due to a 'birth/death' calculation. These numbers are made up from whole cloth every month by the BLS and have little if any relevance to actual jobs data. Last month's birth/death adjustment was +5,000 jobs, so this month's +52,000 fudge factor looks conspicuously suspicious. As for the 377,000 seasonal adjustment, it is based on old data from a time when the economy actually was adding jobs and seasonal adjustments had at least some statistical validity.

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