Non Farm Payrolls Benchmark Revision and the Unemployment Rate as Cruel Farce

Well, we forecast the headline number exactly, with a loss of 20,000 jobs. No credit taken, it was as much a judgement call (aka SWAG) as any product of careful measurement.

As you may have heard, the Bureau of Labor Statistics did a benchmark revision. This is Washington speak for 'revised the numbers as far back as anyone might care to remember to give ourselves more wiggle room.'

The benchmark is a product of the Bernays Factor, that measure of public gullibility which permits obviously contrived government statistics to be taken seriously.

Did you react to the positive jobs trend initially announced in September - October 2009? Oops, it was really a greater loss than expected, and not a gain at all. One can only suspect that in a few years this whole recovery could be revised away without so much as a bureaucratic blush.

Here is a picture comparing the old and new headline numbers.



The change is pervasive. One item of note is the taking of more job losses in the earlier years, setting up a stable base for potential job gains in the present, without embarrassing oneself by getting out of synchronization with the actual growth of the civilian population. There will be more 'truing up' of the numbers in the future.


Unemployment Rate as Cruel Farce

Regarding that 'surprise drop' in unemployment to 9.7%, this is the result of people falling off the unemployment benefits radar, and becoming discouraged. It is essentially meaningless, if not downright misleading.

One may as well solve an unemployment problem by shipping people to Australia. Well, that does have some historical precedent. Hard to tell who has gotten the better deal on that one, at least over the long run.

A better measure of unemployment is the Labor Force Participation Rate, which provides information about the total number of people employed as a percent of the population, without benefit of official banishment.



That number continued its downtrend from 64.9% in November to 64.7% in January, with a slight uptick from December's low of 64.6%.

Here is a chart from the good folks at Calculated Risk that shows the employment situation in context with other post World War II recessions.



"Recession" hardly does it justice, does it?