The Homa Files

Yesterday’s headline’s trumpeted a 3,000  drop in initial unemployment claims.

Hooray. Right?

Of course not, the BLS revised last week’s number up by 3.000 so that it could report this week as being down by 3,000.

Huh?

Now we’re up to 79 out of 80 weeks — and, at least 20 election season weeks in a row — that the BLS’s “headline number” has under-reported the number of initial unemployment claims … and cast the jobs situation as brighter than it really is.

Based on Thursday’s BLS report, the number for the week ending Sept. 8 was revised upward from 382,000 to 385,000.

In itself, the 3,000 isn’t a big deal.

But, in context it is

Again, I ask: statistical bias or political bias?

If the former: fix it already, BLS.

Hint to BLS: just add 2k or 3k … or .8% to your prelim forecast !

I promise that I’ll stop writing about BLS reporting bias when the streak ends.

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Tags: BLS, unemployment claims

This entry was posted on September 21, 2012 at 6:37 am and is filed under BLS, Employment - Jobs, Statistical Bias, 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.