Employment data may be too good to be true

[sad sally]

8. The magic used to come up with employment numbers can produce whatever is called for.

At the end of December 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said there were 132.9 million people working, and at the end of January 2012 there were 130.4 million people working. There were 243,000 jobs reported as added in January.

How can 2.5 million fewer jobs result in 243,000 jobs created? The magic continues, as the unemployment rate dropped from 8.5 to 8.3 percent. Using this logic, (243,000 jobs reduces the unemployment rate by .2%), for every 1,215,000 people that become employed, the unemployment rate is reducted by a full 1%.

If this pace of continued for two years, 5,832,000 new jobs would be created, and the magic math would bring the unemployment rate down to 3.5% (from the 8.3%) - which would be lower than the boom years of the '90's.

The BLS says 12.8 million people are unemployed, so using the magic math, if half these people got new jobs, the unemployment rate is reduced by over half. This can only be made possible by reducing the number of people seeking jobs and eliminating the number of jobs available.

The official government numbers are suspect.