Jack Welch comments on the brouhaha he made when he questioned last month's 7.8% unemployment statistic. There is a certain subjectivity to these statistics.
The possibility of subjectivity creeping into the process is so
pervasive that the BLS's own "Handbook of Methods" has a full page
explaining the limitations of its data, including how non-sampling
errors get made, from "misinterpretation of the questions" to "errors
made in the estimations of missing data."
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%.
I know I'm not the only person hearing these numbers and saying,
"Really? If all that's true, why are so many people I know still having
such a hard time finding work? Why do I keep hearing about local, state
and federal cutbacks?"
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