The Homa Files

Yeah, yeah, yeah … I’m getting as tired writing about it as you’re getting reading about it.

But, the BLS streak — understating initial claims – continued this week.

Now we’re up to at least 26 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 20 was revised upward from 369,000 to 372,000 … making this week’s headline look 3,000 better.

These guys can’t be this sloppy or this stupid … can they?

= = = = =

To put today’s number in context. let’s flashback to the chart in yesterday’s post . 

The reported 4-week moving average is 374,000.

So, if the relationship of inital unemployment claims and the unemployment rate holds, tomorrow’s BLS report should be an unemployment rate of about 8.1%

That’s what all of my analyses say that the number is … but I’m still betting the under.

I think the BLS will fudge the numbers to keep the unemployment rate under 8%.

We’ll see tomorrow.

>> Latest Posts

Tags: BLS

This entry was posted on November 1, 2012 at 1:59 pm 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.