Analysis: Good economic news something of a mirage

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The unemployment rate drops. Productivity grows. The trade deficit shrinks. Sounds great, right? Not so fast.

Borrowing radio broadcaster Paul Harvey's signature saying: let's hear the rest of the story.

Some seemingly good economic numbers can be something of a mirage masking weaknesses in the national economy.

Let's take the unemployment rate, which dipped to 5 percent in April, from 5.1 percent in March. A closer look reveals that the decline in unemployment is not as good as it looks at first blush. The drop came as the number of people holding part-time jobs for economic reasons swelled to 5.2 million in April, up sharply from 4.4 million a year earlier.


Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gtRH5N9o3AHbwiCPc-p3VvANtkTgD90IRIDG0

[Javaman]

1. the devil is always in the details. especially when dealing with moron*.nt

[onethatcares]

2. anyone that believes a word of what this maladministration says

has to be dumber than a box of rocks.

[sutz12]

3. Nice wording in the headline....

I think "something of a mirage" is kind of like "a little bit pregnant."

:shrug:

And yes, I realize the headline is not the OP's fault. ;)

[pattmarty]

4. I think we here all know that you can spin statistics..........

.....any way you want to. Same for "polls", it's the questions asked and how they are worded. I believe that's what Liberals/Progressives call "nuanced", or conservatives call, huh?.

[bulloney]

5. Our county office of the state dept. of employment services shows an increase in workload,

But the stats for the county shows the unemployment rate is declining. Officials from the local department are saying that people are losing jobs in all sectors, including construction, retail and manufacturing and are seeking training programs to become employable for someone else.

Another example of stats not being what they appear.

[sendero]

6. Inflation...

.. skews everything. Underreported (which it is), it makes it LOOK like there is GDP growth when there is not.

It makes it look like there is retail sales growth, which there is not.

The numbers coming out of Washington bear even less relationship to reality than usual. The Republicans and their lackeys are DESPERATE to keep this game afloat until November.

It's not going to work though.

[VP505]

7. This mis-administration has

convoluted the way unemployment and jobs created numbers are figured that its nearly impossible to know with any degree of certainty what is true or not. The only thing we know for sure is that we can not believe anything they tell us.

[ToughLuck]

8. Liars the lot of them..Bush and now McCain will continue to lie

its not going to work this time around.

[brentspeak]

9. Wow, some honest economics reporting for once