working

ADVERTISERS

POPULAR TAGS

ADVERTISERS

 Outside the Beltway 

More Bogus Numbers From Powerline

Earlier I noted that John Hinderaker’s “35,000″ number was bogus, and now it is the rather lackluster job numbers from the Payroll Survey and some bogus spin from Paul Mirengoff.

In his second paragraph, Kos refers to “the jobless recovery” of the Bush years. That’s the jobless recovery that has produced roughly 200,000 new jobs per month for at least a year and a half, except during the immediate aftermath of Katrina.

As I have noted before 200,000 is better than none, but by historical standards it is quite anemic. This picture of the data from the BLS really drives the point home,

netchangeinpayrollsurvey.gif

Also, I’m not sure where Hinderaker Mirengoff is getting that 200,000 number. Taking the last 18 months of data I get about 165,000 jobs/month (this is for Nov. 2004 through April 2006–and taking Oct 2004 through March 2006 gives us 176,000). That is quite a rounding error.

About the Author: Steve has a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and attended graduate school at The George Washington University, leaving school shortly before staring work on his dissertation when his first child was born. He works in the energy industry and prior to that worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Division of Price Index and Number Research.
 
 
Related Stories:
    • None Found
 
Recent Stories:
| Subscribe to RSS Feed | Permalink | Send TrackBack
 
Comments
 

Take out Sept & Nov as Katrina adjustment and you may get the averge he does -- I haven't actually done it.

Posted by spencer | May 11, 2006 | 04:31 pm | Permalink
 

Ummm...no that doesn't work either...at least not without rounding up about 20k.

Maybe there was a substantial downward revision in one of the months that I've missed. Finding that though is more work than I want to spend on their propaganda.

Posted by Steve Verdon | May 11, 2006 | 05:22 pm | Permalink
 

The important thing to keep in mind is that the population increases 150,000 per month. Job growth below that number is actually net job loss.

Posted by Elrod | May 12, 2006 | 10:35 am | Permalink
 

Precisely Elrod. When you take that into account the 200,000/month looks so-so. Factor in that it is really about 165,000 to 175,000 and it is actually pretty piss poor.

Posted by Steve Verdon | May 12, 2006 | 02:32 pm | Permalink
 

RSS feed for these comments.

Comments are Closed

 
Search OTB
OTB RSS Subscribers via FeedBurner
For Advertising Info, write
otb@blogads.com

ADVERTISERS

OTB MEDIA

OTB Gone Hollywood

OTB Sports

Allie is Wired



Visitors Since Feb. 4, 2003

All original content copyright 2003-2008 by OTB Media. All rights reserved.