Quote:
Originally posted by fintstone
Of course he is. The claim that "a certain number of jobs have been lost" is certainly not the same as saying the "percentage of jobs with respect to the population has decreased." just as posted...more people are employed in the US than ever before in history.....so stating that "X millions of jobs have been lost is clearly inaccurate," and obviously intentionally so.
|
In stating that jobs have been lost during Bush's Administration, Kerry is simply relying on the same payroll survey data that virtually all knowledgeable people use to judge total job growth in the economy.
The people who claim total jobs have risen, citing the household survey that you're citing, are either (a) partisan hacks trying to mislead or (b) ignorant.
I'm going to show you some of those knowledgeable people now.
1. Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve (who knows more about economic statistics than any political commentator or partisan blogger - even the nationally syndicated Neal Boortz!):
“I wish I could say the household survey were the more accurate. Everything we’ve looked at suggests that it’s the payroll data which are the series which you have to follow.”
http://www.frbsf.org/education/activities/drecon/2004/0406.html
2. Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Kathleen Utgoff (who heads the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that produces the surveys):
"I would like to comment on employment trends as measured by the payroll and household surveys, an issue that has been receiving some attention recently. Since November 2001, the NBER-designated trough of the most recent business cycle, payroll employment has fallen while nonagricultural wage and salary employment from the household survey has been essentially flat. 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."
http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/~sieg602/Articles/Divergence.html
3. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' own statisticians, who designed and performed the surveys:
"Labor Department statisticians caution against using the levels of employment from the household survey, which is scientifically designed to measure rates of employment. The household survey showed the unemployment rate at 5.4 percent in September, down from a high of 6.3 in June 2003 but up from 4.2 percent in January 2001.
Labor statisticians believe the payroll survey, which uses data from more than 400,000 establishments, does a better job of measuring the monthly change in the level of employment. And its accuracy is enhanced as the data gets older, because the figures are repeatedly revised as more information becomes available.
That makes it especially "tricky" to make historical comparisons with the household survey, since the data is not "benchmarked" in the same fashion as the payroll survey, department staffers warn."
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?siteid=google&dist=google&guid=%7B511E344B-FB89-4A1B-A184-6EB7BADB6AFD%7D
4. Knowledgeable economists (such as these, on the New York Federal Reserve Bank site):
[discussing the payroll survey] "The BLS takes great care to arrive at accurate estimates. When compiling the payroll data, the BLS collects information from nearly 400,000 establishments—a large sample encompassing roughly 37 percent of total nonfarm employment. The numbers from this sample are scaled up to provide prompt monthly estimates of the number of jobs held in the nation as a whole. Then, in March of each year, the BLS revises its estimates by comparing them with a complete set of administrative records from the state unemployment insurance system. The records cover a full 98 percent of U.S. nonfarm employment, and supplemental sources are used to estimate the remaining 2 percent."
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:RxEQNMl_2goJ:www.newyorkfed.org/research/current_issues/ci5-16.pdf+payroll+household+survey&hl=en
If you actually research this, as I have, you'll realize how unreliable the household survey's job count is. For example, a couple years ago the BLS raised the estimated population, which raised the estimated job count from that point forward, but the previous estimates were not changed. This is called a "series break" and makes the survey very unreliable to measure multi-year job growth. The survey is designed to measure the ratios of people in different employed/unemployed classification,
not to measure total job growth. The people who designed the survey, run the survey, head the BLS, etc have all said that.
Compare to the payroll survey, which uses data from 37% of all payroll jobs in the US (an incredibly large sample) and is checked and calibrated every year against unemployment insurance filings. This survey is specifically designed to measure job growth, and is the data used by people who know what they're talking about. You know, like Alan Greenspan.
Hope this explains things to you. Some of Kerry's and Bush's claims are questionable, but the statement that jobs have been lost during this Administration is not one of them. That one is true.