Don Kenobi
/ 83.5.242.* / 2009-05-08 17:45
Friday, May 8, 2009
The Real Memo Out Of The Bureau Of Lies And Statistics
Posted by Tyler Durden at 9:52 AM
"We're leveling off! We're leveling off!"—so is the hope of TTT, Helicopter Ben, Larry the Wall Street Lackey and the rest of Team Obama. "This recession is leveling off!"
No it's not: The unemployment figures just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are totally cosmetic: We lost a whole lot more than 531,000 unemployed.
First, the "seasonal adjustment", which is a black box that can tweek me into looking like Dumbo the flying elephant. They're knocking off ±65,000 workers for no clearly discernible reason.
Second, notice that the Census Bureau hired 60,000 people last month. Those workers (by definition) are temporary, and are a net cost to the economy, as they will not be adding marginal utility to any economic sector, the census being merely a social expenditure.
Those two items alone turn 530,000 new unemployed into 655,000.
Now notice how, once again, previous months' figures have been readjusted. This time, the readjustments weren't so bad—a mere 30,000 more unemployed in February, turning that month's official totals to 681,000, and another 30,000 for March, making that month's official number 699,000, just shy of that magic 700,000 monthly number (BTW, remember back in the good old days when 300,000 monthly unemployed was"shocking"?)