Spinning the Employment Data

CNBC is reporting that the Obama administration, apparently Joe Biden was the spokesman, is out with a claim that its stimulus plan has created or saved 150,000 jobs so far. Given the continuing glum news on employment you may be wondering how this could be so. The answer is simple. It’s pure spin.

Here’s how the game they’re playing works. Remember that when they rolled out the stimulus bill they made a lot of claims about how many jobs it would create or save. The key word here is save and that was a new wrinkle from them.

Forget January, Obama wasn’t in power all month, let’s look at February through April. The numbers are from the BLS. In February non-farm employment was 133,652,000. In April it was 132,414,000 so arguably the economy lost 1,238,000 jobs. How then does the Obama administration claim to have created or saved 150,000 jobs.

The answer lies in the word saved that they introduced into the equation when they came out with their stimulus plan. Regardless of what the absolute numbers say about jobs lost or gained the administration can always claim that without their stimulus plan more jobs would have been lost therefore they saved those jobs. It’s a clever way to present their case since there is absolutely no way to refute their number. It’s a guess, an estimate and no fact exists to counter it.

Why should you care about this? Well, to be honest, you shouldn’t really spend a whole lot of time fretting over it. Just keep it in mind the next time you hear them talk about the number of jobs they created or saved and remind yourself to go find out what really happened.

More: here (Keith Hennessey has a long discussion about this with charts)

Comments

[Al-USA]

Very interesting spin that they made on the unemployment numbers. Thanks for bringing it to the attention of your readers.

2009 May 14 02:01 AM

[User 267708]

Much of the spin is entirely dependent upon the base employment figures. Last year the unemployment rate was 5.6% with an employment base of 150,000,000. Now the unemployment rate is reported at 8.9% of a 132.414,000 base for 11,785,000 unemployed. The unemployed difference between last year and now is 17,584,000 a 11.7% unemployment rate. Spin is a very polite way of characterizing the manipulation of government statistics. The remnant are being saved for a future government crisis.

2009 May 14 05:36 AM

[sunnsea]

When will a meaningful jobs program be creasted, not just job retraining? Will we have to go to 25% unemployment? Somehow, that does not seem beyond the realm of possibility now.

2009 May 14 10:00 AM

[Old Trader]

Cetin,

I've no idea if you're correct in saying the shovel ready projects were a scam to suck in the Dems, but I strongly disagree that such projects would necessarily be a waste of time and money. A good example would be doing something about the condition of thousands of substandard, old, and crumbling bridges, all over the country. I'm NOT referring to building new "bridges to nowhere"...I'm talking about the ones that exist that DO go "somewhere". And that's just area of our infrastructure screaming for attention.


On May 14 11:13 AM Cetin Hakimoglu wrote:

> The whole shovel ready project sales pitch was just a lie to sucker
> in democrats. Obama is a politician; what else would you expect?
> Shovel projects would just be a waste of time and money, anyway.

2009 May 15 01:27 AM

[TheReaper!]

The U.S. Government over the years has turned into a real propaganda machine . I am at the point and have been really for years now , that every thing the government says is in reality a lie .

This goes way back to the Vietnam war , which by the way my generation fought for 10 years . As it turned out LBJ lied about us getting attacked , and then because he wanted to , kind of like Bush , got us into a needless 10 year war .

A few years ago for the first time in my life , I actually considered giving up my citizenship and leaving the U.S. . It saddens me to say that , but I think this country is finished not only as a world power , but as a moral leader .

TheReaper!

2009 May 19 02:20 AM