Bah, Humbug, BLS!
December 4th, 2009By David Goldman
Odd that the BLS numbers are so strongly at variance with the ADP data earlier this week, not to mention the purchasing managers’ service industries report. I wouldn’t open th champagne just yet.
Hmmm — the “unemployment rate” is down to 10% from 10.2%, eh? The BLS notes that (seasonally adjusted) the number of working age adults “not in the labor force” rose by almost 300,000, that is, from 82,575 to 82,866, so that the labor force participation rate actually fell, to 65% from 65.1%. In other words, there are more “discouraged” workers and fewer “unemployed” by strict definition.
About 2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in
November, an increase of 376,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not sea-
sonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and
were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12
months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched
for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
December 6th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Well, what´s wrong in cooking the numbers? I mean, look, all progressive countries do it: Zimbabwe, Cuba, Myanmar ….
“It almost seems too good to be true. We even thought it was a misprint at first, so I want to see more follow-through. But if this continues, you may start to see the dollar rally on strong data rather than the opposite.” said Fabian Eliasson, vice president of FX sales at Mizuho Corporate bank in New York.