Jobs Data Nonsense

The jobs report from the Bureau of Lies and Scams tells us that the country added 228,000 new jobs in November, which has economists ecstatic about the “robust economy” and has them swooning about the economy being “on its firmist footing in at least a decade,” but is leaving them confused about why “salaries show meager growth,” given their theory that increasing employment should lead to increasing wages.

Maybe it’s because the jobs increase is not as “robust” as the “Employer Survey” would lead us to believe, since the “Household Survey” tells us that 43,000 fewer were employed in November than in the previous month.

The report does turn that 43,000 fewer people into 57,000 more people employed on a “seasonally adjusted” basis, but one has to wonder how those seasonal adjustments are helping some 100,000 people pay their bills. Do the mortgage and utility companies accept seasonal adjustments as payment?

The absurdity of the method used by the BLS to report on the jobs situation in the nation simply defies belief. They conduct telephone surveys which result in two conflicting reports which inform us that 43,000 fewer people are filling 228,000 additional jobs. They then attempt to reconcile that discrepancy with “seasonal adjustments” of 100,000 fictional workers that suggest that 57,000 new workers are filling those 228,000 new jobs.

Really? Neither the 100,000 seasonal adjustments, nor the 57,000 imaginary new workers that result from the 100,000 seasonal adjustments can fill 228,000 new jobs.

If you’re going to make up numbers, at least make up numbers that work.

What sense, regardless of the rationale for them, do seasonal adjustments make? We’re talking about living breathing people here, and about whether or not they are able to feed their families. If you are in the labor force, are you employed, unemployed, or are you a “seasonal adjustment” as reported by the Labor Department? Ridiculous.

There is a very easy, fast and highly accurate method of reporting on the jobs status. Employers file payroll tax reports within ten days of every pay period, and from that data we can gain the exact number of people employed and the exact amount they are paid. The BLS says they cannot use those records due to “privacy concerns” which is utter nonsense.

Those databases can provide information in any manner which is programmed into them, including summary numbers and totals, and the information needed to provide jobs data can be provided all but instantaneously with total respect to the privacy of all individuals. Ignoring them to obtain contradictory, tardy, costly and contradictory data in the current manner is utter stupidity.