Boring, Boring, Boring Information

[Randy4Candy]

Hope this worked...

Bureau of Labor Statistics report for February 2012.

empsit.pdf

This is probably not the best way to post this, but that's da way baseball go.....

[CJ7]

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

[Guest050715-1]

I don't know that it's boring. At a glance it seems to be decent news. So the answer is unchanged? I had trouble finding the margin of error, but from the adjustment in average hourly wage for Dec and Jan, it seems the error may be quite high.

Don’t know that I buy this as a definition of employed.

People are classified as employed if they did any work
at all as paid employees during the reference week; worked
in their own business, profession, or on their own farm; or
worked without pay at least 15 hours in a family business or
farm. People are also counted as employed if they were
temporarily absent from their jobs because of illness, bad
weather, vacation, labor-management disputes, or personal
reasons.

This seems to be a good definition of unemployed, though the two definitions seem to be at odds with each other.

People are classified as unemployed if they meet all of
the following criteria: they had no employment during the
reference week; they were available for work at that time;
and they made specific efforts to find employment
sometime during the 4-week period ending with the
reference week. Persons laid off from a job and expecting
recall need not be looking for work to be counted as
unemployed. The unemployment data derived from the
household survey in no way depend upon the eligibility for
or receipt of unemployment insurance benefits.


It would be interesting to see this figure, adjusted for inflation (that we don’t have lol), for pre-recession average hourly earnings.

In February, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 3 cents, or
0.1 percent, to $23.31. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.9 percent.
In February, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose
by 3 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $19.64. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)

These adjustments are quite significant. December’s adjustment was 10% and January’s adjustment was 17%. Seems to be a pretty big margin of error. Did they just make that big of a mistake or are they fudging numbers to bury them later in subsequent reports?

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for December was revised from +203,000 to +223,000,
and the change for January was revised from +243,000 to +284,000.

[CJ7]

the rate can be revised up or down from the estimate

[CJ7]

http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesregrevtec.htm

[Guest050715-1]

Originally Posted by CJ7

the rate can be revised up or down from the estimate

Those seem to be pretty big adjustments. I'd be amazed to see a politico accept those estimates. Fortunately they adjusted up, but it could go both ways verdad?

[CJ7]

the link explains it

[Randy4Candy]

The margin of error varies only in the collecting of data on time as was noted in CJ7's link. This is why the originals are "estimates" and why the BLS continually revises the reports. This is not a poll, it is a display of reported data. Also, they are not intended to be "snapshots" of conditions at any time, but are to be used in conjunction with pervious and future reports. Eventually, they become dots on a graph or bars on a chart.

I think most people have trouble with the definition of "employed." It can be argued that the government wants to show as much employment as possible in the private sector. The definition of "unemployed" attempts to temper this somewhat. It can also be argued that ANY income coming from the private sector reduces by some factor the assistance that would come from the various state and federal programs.

Of course, in the minds of those who are looking for them, all of this stuff is just another government cover up or brainwasing tool. That's probably why the BLS makes it public for anyone, any organization or other statisticians to look at. This is not like some "government spokesperson" standing up and citing the figures and never allowing anyone else outside to see it. It's good to be wary, especially with complicated things, but to be skeptical to the point of ignoring information runs any train of thought, regardless of political orientation, off the tracks. Unfortunately, the desire by humans to "cut to the chase" and have distilled information bites causes trouble. Many, well most, things just don't fit well on a bumper sticker, no matter how much we want them to.