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Saturday, August 4, 2012

Did They Lie?

John Crudele is a columnist at the New York Post who writes often about employment reports. In the press, he is an acknowledged expert on the subject. He is out with a column discussing yesterday's employment report for July, and what he says is very disturbing. Simply put, Crudele thinks that the government fudged the numbers to make things look better than they really are. Let me explain:

Each month, the Labor Department includes in the job numbers a figure called the birth/death component. This is an estimate of jobs created or destroyed as a result of new businesses that were not contacted or old businesses that closed their doors. The numbers are supposedly based upon historical data that was compared to the monthly reports. In July, the birth/death model has always called for a reduction in the number of jobs created; in other words July has historically had more existing businesses fail than new businesses start. According to Crudele, the July average over the last five years has been for a reduction of 20,000 jobs on the birth/death model with last year's figure being a loss of 38,000 jobs. Strangely, this year's report showed an ADDITION of 52,000 jobs. That is a swing of 90,000 jobs from last year's report just as a result of this estimate by government insiders. This component of the report is not based upon a survey; there is nothing underlying the figure other than an estimate. That makes it easy to throw in another 90,000 jobs in an effort to make things look better for Obama. It also makes much clearer how the jobs number could come in higher than expected while the unemployment rate (which is based upon actual data) went higher.

Is there anything that Obama won't do to get re-elected? Apparently not!

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