Funny Numbers

The federal government is quite punishing to corporations which report inflated figures to their stockholders. In fact, ever since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, CEOs and CFOs must personally sign off on their financial statements under the penalties of personal prosecution. But not so the federal government. Our White House hosers feel that they can manufacture any numbers that suit their political purposes. The most recent example is the inflation of the Obamacare sign-up numbers last Spring by 1.3 million out of 8 million reported ... see: Breitbart Article. This is a 16.2% inflation of this figure ... or a "material" misstatement in corporate terms ... one that might well end the responsible executive in the hoosegow.

And this is not the first time that the Obama administration has used funny numbers to serve their political purposes. Remember how there was a convenient reduction in the unemployment rate right before the 2012 presidential election? See: My Tinfoil Hat. This, in my opinion, was due to the politicizing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This slight-of-hand has oft been repeated when Obama brags about the number of new jobs he has created ... see: Weasel Words. And, as a consequence, I have become suspicious of most of the numbers that our current government publishes ... deficits, Federal Reserve balance sheet numbers (see: Finger on the Scale), and maybe even macro-economic measures may have been compromised.

I wonder how old our president really is?

Parboiled

I have, in the past, indicated that I thought the Bureau of Labor Statistics has become politicized … see: My Tinfoil Hat.  In particular, to me (and many others), the unemployment numbers right before the 2012 elections looked cooked … by artificially reducing the stated rate.

Now, is it possible that the dismal number of new hires this last December have also been parboiled to create the meme that unemployment benefits need to be extended? (See: The Weekly Standard Story).  How crass of me to suggest such unctuous political motives on the part of the Obama administration …

My Tinfoil Hat

Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric), Donald Trump (The Donald), Mort Zuckerman (Editor of U.S. News & World Report, owner of the N.Y. Daily News, and founder of Boston Properties), and most right-wing talk-show hosts believe that the recent favorable 7.8% unemployment rate is very suspicious ... thinking that the data has been somehow rigged.  However, I have not yet seen any of them (including the New York Times in two stories) who can point to a possible reason for this misfeasance ... except for myself (bedecked in my tinfoil hat) among a very few others. 

And this is because I have discovered an Obama political operative who has been running the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) since June 14th of this year and whom I suspect is the reason that the unemployment rate suddenly dropped below 8% ... a big political plus for The Barry one month before the Presidential election ... strangely serendipitous.  Her name is Erica Groshen.  None of the luminaries mentioned above seem to know of this coincidence.  Even a recent ABC story seems to think that the BLS is still under the control of apolitical bureaucrats ... see: ABC News Story.  Nonsense!

In order to show you how far off the reservation I have sidled (excuse me, Elizabeth Warren), let me direct you to two wingnut websites I have uncovered ... see: Freedumb Nation and Net Right Daily (please indulge me and read them both).  Although these sites do seem a little odd, they both give one an idea of how really far left this new head of the BLS seems to drop her Birkenstocks.  And, if you believe that her political bent would not cause her to "persuade" her direct reports to follow her lead to the most bizarre adjustment for BLS unemployment statistics in at least 29 years, then you don't understand "the Chicago way."

Funny Business

Isn't it funny that, after a tradition of promoting from within and just a few months after the Bureau of Labor Statistics has had an outside Obama political operative appointed to lead this agency (see: AllGov Announcement), 12-month employment numbers have suddenly been revised upwards by 453,000 workers (see: Washington Post Story).  If the current administration is stooping to this level to cook the books (my studied surmise), what other mischief are they up to?

A Drop

Just so you know ... the recent unemployment data dump by the Bureau of Labor Statistics which pegged the unemployment rate at 8.1%, a drop from the previous 8.3%, neglects to highlight a few key statistics, viz, the actual number of persons employed, in fact, dropped by 120,000 and the workforce dropped a suspiciously staggering 580,000.  It is the interplay of these two numbers that creates the convenient fiction that the unemployment rate is dropping.  See: CPS Tables and click on the HTML version of the A-1 table under Monthly Household Data.

Employment Leadership

Picture from the Powerline Blog

I just heard Obama brag that his administration has created 4.5 million jobs in the last 29 months and 1.5 million jobs since the beginning of the year.  Balderdash!

As it turns out the U.S. economy has created only 3.2 million net jobs (not 4.5 million) since January of 2010 (a little over 29 months ago) while, at the same time, our population  has grown by 5.5 million ... and 4.4 million people have stopped looking for jobs (left the labor force). 

Year-to-date, these numbers show job growth of 583 thousand (not 1.5 million) while our population has grown by 1.1 milliom and 466 thousand people have left the labor force. 

And just in the last month, these statistics show that the U.S. economy has lost 195 thousand net jobs (NOT growth of 163,000 as widely reported ... quite disturbing) while, at the same time, our population has grown by 199 thousand ... and 348 thousand people have stopped looking for jobs.  And this drop in the number of those seeking jobs is the only way that our current unemployment rate isnot higher than 8.3%.

But even more damning are the numbers since Obama took office (January, 2009).  Since then, the U.S. economy has created only 2.3 million net jobs while, at the same time, our population  has grown by 7.6 million people ... and 6.7 million people have left the labor force.  If the U.S. labor force participation rate was the same today as it was in January, 2009 (65.4%), then our unemployment rate would be a more revealing 10.6%!

As always, I get this data from the CPS Tables and by clicking on the HTML version of the A-1 table under Monthly Household Data.  (If you question the veracity of my above assessments, please go to this site and see for yourself.)

"Lucy

Lucille Ball

you got some splainin' to do" ...  In this case "Lucy" is the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  We were greeted this morning with some encouraging employment numbers (see: LA Times Story).  In particular, this nation's unemployment rate has dropped to 8.3%.  As is my wont, I then went to the source data at the Bureau to see what was what (see: CPS Tables and click on the HTML version of the A-1 table under Monthly Household Data).  And what I found was puzzling ... the civilian noninstitutional population (a non-seasonally-adjusted number) increased by almost 1.7 million in the month of January alone.  This compares to an average increase throughout all of 2011 of around 140 thousand per month.  This makes the current figure over 12 times higher than what might be considered normal!  This is certainly an outlying statistical jump and needs to be explained if one is to understand (and maybe even trust) these new good unemployment numbers.

My guess -- perhaps it is the huge jump in foreign nationals entering the U.S. to take jobs not given ... or maybe not even offered to U.S. citizens (see: Numbers USA) and this needs to be accounted for by the Bureau ... and it chose to do so all in the month of January.

And also please note the very large pop in the number of people who have left the labor force in January  ... almost 1.2 million versus an average of 215 thousand per month throughout 2011.  This is up by a factor of almost 6!  I find this too to be somewhat strange.

So, although the reported unemployment numbers do appear to be encouraging for our economic prospects, I am not doing cartwheels quite yet.

Pants on Fire

In his State of the Union address last week The Barry said, "In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs."  Let us now see if this is factual.  From the Bureau of Labor Statistics own A-1 seasonally adjusted tables (see: CPS Tables and click on the HTML version of the A-1 table under Monthly Household Data) there were 139.9 million people employed in the civilian labor force when Obama took office in January of 2009.  In January of 2010, this same number stood at 139.1 million (down 800 thousand).  And, at the end of December last year, there were 140.8 million employed according to the same table.  This is only an increase of 900 thousand since he took office (while the relevant working-age population grew by 4.8 million) and, up 1.7 million in the last 23 months.  This clearly is "not more than 3 million."

That is ... unless Obama is counting what U.S. companies have hired abroad (a possibility) ... or, even more disturbingly, the fact that U.S. companies may be employing slews of foreign nationals instead of U.S. citizens (see: Numbers USA).  In any case, I have already heard many Obama surrogates quoting this "fact" and I'm sure that the American public already has this hook and worm well down its gullet.

Moral of the story: "Don't mess with the bully pulpit."

Nefarious Acts

Snidely Whiplash

It seems almost daily that the Obama administration tries to pull off some Chicago-style dastardly act.  Currently it is by not promoting from within the Bureau of Labor Statistics and thus politicizing this erstwhile noble institution (upon which I have repeatedly relied in the past to point out how unemployment numbers have been misrepresented by the higher-up Obama jamokes).  See: PJ Media Exclusive.  Is there no act of subterfuge that these nefarious blaggards will not stoop to?

"Just the Facts Ma'am"

Jack Webb

As is often said, there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics ... particularly when uttered by politicians.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz, (D, Florida and Chairman of the Democrat National Committee) recently justified this aphorism when she said that unemployment had not gone up under Obama (see: Schultz Spins).  So, I have gone back to my source, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to see if this were the case. The actual series (A-1) facts (see BLS.gov) are reprised below.

To update from my previous Fact Check, when The Barry took office the civilian non-institutional population (CN-IP) of the United States was 232.6 million and the seasonally-adjusted number of people employed was 142.2 million (after the shock of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in late 2008). As of the end of November, 2011, the civilian non-institutional population was 240.4 million (up 7.8 million) whereas the equivalent employment number was 140.6 million (down 1.6 million). More interestingly, the percentage of the CN-IP that had jobs when The Barry took office was 61.1%; whereas today it is 58.5% (down 2.6 percentage points.) 

Or, if the employed percentage of the CN-IP had stayed the same as when Obama took office, then this country's employed labor force would total 146.9 million jobs ... up 6.3 million jobs. To fully recover from the shock of the sub-prime mortgage crisis (a loss of 3.0 million jobs as of January, 2009), President Obama's economic cabal would have had to cause allow 9.3 million jobs to be created ... let alone give  permit us any true job growth.

So, as we used to say when I was much younger dude, Debbie Wasserman Shwartz appears to be blowing smoke up our collective arses.

Addendum:  Don't forget that, to figure the grand total job creation shortfall under Obama, you need to add his actual jobs decline of 1.6 million to the above 6.3 million normative figure to get a 7.9 million deficit ... or a 10.9 million shortfall if one factors in the sub-prime job losses under Bush (again, before any true job growth.)

For the Record

Yesterday, while perusing the Bureau of Labor Statistics website (see BLS.gov) for verification of Obama's contention about his jobs growth performance (see Fact Check), I also researched George W. Bush's record on the same statistic.  (Democrats and many media types repeatedly claim that Bush ... and the Bush tax cuts ... did not grow jobs during his Presidency.)  As it turns out, there were 137.8 million (seasonally adjusted) Americans working when G.W.B. took office and an equivalent 142.2 million Americans working when he left -- an increase of 4.4 million workers.  However, Bush's last six months in office were severely impacted by the sub-prime mortgage crisis ... with the result of 3.3 million Americans joining the ranks of the unemployed.

So, the near high-water mark of the effects of the Bush tax cuts and his management of the U.S. economy was that jobs grew by more than 7.7 million (4.4 million + 3.3 million) Americans.  The Barry's regime, so far, has shrunk the number of jobs in this country by 2.9 million.  Somehow, the facts always seem to be ignored or spun during political discourse.  What a pity!