The Homa Files

Last week, Team Obama was crowing about the huge drop in initial unemployment claims … proof poitive that the recovery was gaining steam.

They failed to mention the fact that the state of California sat on a pile of claims … making the numbers look better than they really were.

• See Unemployment claims are down (if you don’t count California) for details

Well, as Rev. Wright would say, the chickens have come home to roost.

According to the BLS: “In the week ending October 13, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 388,000, an increase of 46,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 342,000.”

Oops.

Headline: “Jobless claims increase 46,000”

Not exactly proof positive of an economy gaining steam.

My bet, Team Obama emphasizes that claims are overstated because of California.

Too bad.

* * * * *
And, yes … the BLS streak — understating initial claims – continued.

Now we’re up to at least 23 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 today’s BLS report, the number for the week ending October 6  was revised upward from 339,000 to 342,000.

C’mon guys … get it right already.

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This entry was posted on October 18, 2012 at 2:30 pm and is filed under 2012 Campaign, 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.