The Homa Files

You may remember that the BLS reported a dramatic drop in the unemployment rate for January — down from 8.5% to 8.3%.

At the time, we (and many other folks) pointed out that the apparent improvement was largely drive by people leaving the work force, by seasonal adjustments (which were more liberal than prior years), and by a revision in the way that the BLS compiles the numbers.

In other words, smelled like some book-cooking going on.

At the time, we encouraged loyal readers to start watching the Gallup daily tracking of the unemployment rate.  Historically, it has been a pretty good canary in the unemployment coal mine.

Typically, Gallup’s mid-month number is a good predictor of the BLS’s end-of-month number.

Well, the Gallup number has increased dramatically from mid-January to mid-February … from 8.3% (same as the BLS end of January number) … up to 9%, where it has bee hanging.

The number reported by the BLS for February will be very, very interesting …

Based on Gallup, the unemployment rate should surge back up.

Unless, of course, somebody cooks the books …

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Tags: BLS, Gallup, unemployment

This entry was posted on February 21, 2012 at 6:57 am and is filed under Employment - Jobs, Unemployment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.