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June 05, 2003

Lies and Unemployment Stats

I have to do more research on this one, but apparently Bush's Department of Labor is systematically cooking the books on unemployment numbers.

We know that traditionally long-term unemployed fall out of the unemployment rate, but new measures are "seasonally adjusting" away all sorts of unemployed people. But when total job growth is counted, the DOL adds in jobs for companies they assume are there-- not unreasonable, but the Department is now assuming job growth in those companies, adding hundreds of thousands of phantom jobs to the count, even though the department has no real information on them.

So be pretty skeptical of jobs information. We know this administration will distort agency information for political purposes. The jobs numbers may rapidly be falling into the same political hole as weapons of mass destruction.

Posted by Nathan at June 5, 2003 08:23 AM