The Politics of Unemployment

By InfoMetrics

Recently, the U.S. unemployment figures have come under question
by many respected economists and analysts, as well as many interested
observers. While the state of the economy is fairly stagnant with most major
indicators flat or negative, surprisingly, the unemployment numbers are
inexplicably trending downward.

The questioning  of the BLS’s reports and data are nothing new, but of late
are being scrutinized more and more. The BLS has a long history of revising
labor and employment data over and over again. In fact, in the last year often
making double revisions on one data-set. While there are many who claim that
the BLS is absolutely “independent” of  its administrations (Republican or Democrat)
what has come to light in the past 3 years suggests something otherwise.

Our Findings:

in addition to the monthly unemployment reports manipulating the
LFPR (Labor Force Participation Rate) and discounting the un-attached
workers, there is another clear, concise example of the questionable data.
Which is the very alarming, 20-Month revision in the BLS’s Non-Farm
PayrollS.A. Data from May 2009 to February 2011.

 

 

From May ’09 to February ’11, the BLS has revised NFP DOWNWARD by
approximately 550,000. This is a  massive revision to the original data
by what is supposed to be an “independent” agency.

Analysis:

The crux of any analysis, is the reliability of the collected data.
When the source of data and research is called into question, its
very credibility suffers and trust becomes a significant issue.