Excuse Me, Sir. Your Pants are on Fire It's a damn shame that I don't have a "Lying Bastard of the Day" award here on The Agora, because this guy would get one.
Tonight on The Newshour, a segment on today's unemployment numbers featured Bruce Bartlett, a former deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in the Treasury Deptment under the first President Bush and now a senior fellow with the national center for Policy Analysis. Analyzing the report, he stated (transcript courtesy of the TiVo). When the host asked if he thought the job numbers would improve in the coming months, he said he thought that they would,
In fact, they look better right now. You have to remember that the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates jobs with two different surveys, the payroll survey and the household survey. The household survey number--which is the official one for calculating the unemployment rate--actually showed a very substantial increase in jobs. We've had more than a million new jobs created this year on that survey, but we've had a loss of about 400,000 some jobs on the other survey. This is not unusual at this point of the business cycle, because a lot of new jobs are being created by new business that have come into existence that are not in the survey. So I think that when the data are revised we may find that there were more jobs created than we thought.
Technically correct. Also, bullshit.
Yes, the household survey does show an increase in jobs, but that increase is an artifact of the methodology of the survey, as the Department of Labor freely admits, and as someone with Barlett's resume surely knows.
From the Washington Post:
In a statement to Congress' Joint Economic Committee, Kathleen P. Utgoff, commissioner of labor statistics, noted, "Some observers have speculated that the household survey provides a better indication of the trend in employment at and around turning points in the business cycle. It is our judgment that the payroll survey provides more reliable information on the current trend in wage and salary employment."
Utgoff said the much larger size of the payroll survey sample, which is benchmarked each year by comprehensive data from federal unemployment insurance returns filed by firms, makes it more reliable.
Since November 2001, the end of that year's recession, the number of payroll jobs has declined by more than 1.2 million, while employment shown by the household survey has gone up by about 1.4 million. However, a substantial portion of that increase was due to a population adjustment introduced last January, and Utgoff characterized employment shown by the household survey since the recession's end as "essentially flat."
However, a substantial portion of that increase was due to a population adjustment introduced last January, and Utgoff characterized employment shown by the household survey since the recession's end as "essentially flat."
93,000 jobs lost in August. This is a serious problem and it needs to be addressed by serious people intent of solving it. We don't have time for spin; we don't have time for politicians more interested in hanging a happy face on a train wreck than dealing straight with the American people.
The assessment offered by an economist quoted in the Washington Post article is bleak:
"The jobs report is just awful," said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services in Boston. "Businesses across the board are figuring out ways to do more with fewer people. Practically every sector of the economy got rid of jobs in August."
Cheney also voiced a concern shared some analysts that if employment does not begin to increase substantially, the strong economic growth now expected for the rest of this year might begin to wane in 2004.
"If even 5 percent or 6 percent . . . growth isn't enough to get any net hiring, the risks rise that the stimulus from the tax cuts and defense spending could produce a one-time boost that will fizzle out next year," Cheney said.
Update: The Newshour now has the transcript up for last night's show. The Unemployment piece is here. The Bartlett segment begins about 1/4 of the way down. My instant TiVo transcript was pretty acurate.
9:46:12 PM 
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