Thursday, October 11, 2012

JACK WELCH DOUBLES DOWN: Yes, the Unemployment Rate is Bogus and Here's Why, Media-Schmucks

Actually, he didn't call them "media-schmucks", but I'm sure that was just an oversight on his part:

Even if the BLS had a perfect process, the context surrounding the 7.8% figure still bears serious skepticism. Consider the following:

In August, the labor-force participation rate in the U.S. dropped to 63.5%, the lowest since September 1981. By definition, fewer people in the workforce leads to better unemployment numbers. That's why the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1% in August from 8.3% in July.

Meanwhile, we're told in the BLS report that in the months of August and September, federal, state and local governments added 602,000 workers to their payrolls, the largest two-month increase in more than 20 years. And the BLS tells us that, overall, 873,000 workers were added in September, the largest one-month increase since 1983, during the booming Reagan recovery.

These three statistics—the labor-force participation rate, the growth in government workers, and overall job growth, all multidecade records achieved over the past two months—have to raise some eyebrows. There were no economists, liberal or conservative, predicting that unemployment in September would drop below 8%.

Not to worry, Jack. Nate Silver's mathemalogical models predicted this improvement in the labor market.

Can't you just smell all of the jobs being created?



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