One of the advantages of writing an opinion blog is that opinions are never inaccurate, even when they are wrong. But we should expect better from government agencies who publish statistics that policy makers, businesspeople, academics, journalists, and citizens rely on to make decisions and draw conclusions – like the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), for example.
Recently, the Bureau named Wisconsin as the state with the worst job loss in November, with a decline of 14,600. This came on the heels of 9,700 jobs BLS reported lost in October. The Badger State’s two-month total of 24,300 jobs lost led the nation in workplace suckage; and opponents of Wisconsin Governor Walker eagerly jumped on the November BLS presser to bolster their sagging effort to recall him.
One anonymous commenter on my blog site asked me (ok, taunted) what I had to say about those BLS numbers, since I had just written a piece opposing the recall. Instead of reading the BLS press release, I visited the underlying data tables (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.t03.htm) and discovered a slightly different story.
The BLS data show that Wisconsin’s workforce dropped from 3,057,800 in September to 3,055,200 in November, while the number of unemployed in Wisconsin fell from 238,600 to 223,800. Since the workforce is only made up of two parts – the employed and the unemployed – simple subtraction reveals there were 2,819,200 people working in September and 2,831,400 in November.
Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?
That’s right - the BLS data shows an increase of 12,200 jobs during those two months, not the loss of 24,300 reported to the press by the union humps who run the joint. I asked them for an explanation – two bucks says I will hear from Dick Clark again before I get any response from the humble public servants who work for me. Five bucks says no journalist will even bother to ask.
The BLS data reconciles perfectly; unemployment drops by 14,800 because 12,200 jobs are added and 2,600 leave the workforce (retire, move out of state, go back to school, etc.). On the other hand, I could find no combination of numbers that can be tortured into a computation of a 24,300 job loss in October/November. If you can crack the code, I will be happy to print the recipe here at Moment of Clarity.
So, what do I think about the BLS report of Wisconsin’s job losses in November? I think they lied; that’s what I think. It would not be the first time.
My doctoral dissertation in 2006 (late bloomer) was a study of government contract bundling and its impact on small businesses. The conventional wisdom at the time was that 34,221 illegal acts of contract bundling had caused the failure of over 15,000 thousand firms since 1990. My thesis was that the problem was actually far worse than the government was reporting, particularly among minority businesses, and I constructed a study which expected to prove how much worse it really was.
What I discovered, without boring you to tears, is that less than two dozen actual cases were reported by contractors victimized by the practice. The whole issue was bogus – a complete fabrication to increase funding for an agency put on the block during Clinton/Gore’s reinventing government initiative. The government’s data did not support the headlines trumpeted by its agency heads – sound familiar?
I was invited to Washington to brief the heads of procurement for all of the national security agencies, was received begrudgingly at Small Business Administration, and was invited to testify at Senator Kerry’s committee on small business. The Senator apparently had misunderstood my research findings, because when his staff was informed that I had disproved the contract bundling myth, he cancelled my testimony. No hard feelings, Mr. Kerry.
My work was honored internationally for its methodology, and I published a couple of journal articles to scrutinize my findings through academic peer review and publication. From time to time someone still contacts me, as my research is still the most recent academic literature on the subject. But it is not my life’s work; I have a company to run, a family to love, friends to laugh with, and a blog to write.
So I am not surprised that the BLS data does not support its agency heads’ pressers. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess at possible reasons why Obama appointees at the Department of Unions might want to propagandize against the nation’s top union buster, Governor Walker. Or perhaps it was just a simple error - two months in a row. Yeah…yeah, that’s the ticket.
And don’t even get on your high horse, Demski’s; it’s not about you. I don’t care if they are Republican, Democrat, or just members of the Permanent Government Workers Party, they say whatever they want if it serves their own interest. If my Libertarian party ever took control, we would soon be corrupted too; human nature does not grant waivers to humans.
That’s why we need to shut it all down; all but the 18 essential services authorized by the Constitution. Put the Department of Labor and its Bureau of Labor Statistics high on the list of first to go. If you want accurate labor statistics, buy them from Manpower; they are a private sector firm that makes their living by accurately assessing job markets. They are not too big to fail, so they have to get it right.
Profit is the cure for the sloth that makes government worse than useless. Of course, that is just my opinion. And thank you, Anonymous, for asking.
“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D. Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.
Recently, the Bureau named Wisconsin as the state with the worst job loss in November, with a decline of 14,600. This came on the heels of 9,700 jobs BLS reported lost in October. The Badger State’s two-month total of 24,300 jobs lost led the nation in workplace suckage; and opponents of Wisconsin Governor Walker eagerly jumped on the November BLS presser to bolster their sagging effort to recall him.
One anonymous commenter on my blog site asked me (ok, taunted) what I had to say about those BLS numbers, since I had just written a piece opposing the recall. Instead of reading the BLS press release, I visited the underlying data tables (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.t03.htm) and discovered a slightly different story.
The BLS data show that Wisconsin’s workforce dropped from 3,057,800 in September to 3,055,200 in November, while the number of unemployed in Wisconsin fell from 238,600 to 223,800. Since the workforce is only made up of two parts – the employed and the unemployed – simple subtraction reveals there were 2,819,200 people working in September and 2,831,400 in November.
Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?
That’s right - the BLS data shows an increase of 12,200 jobs during those two months, not the loss of 24,300 reported to the press by the union humps who run the joint. I asked them for an explanation – two bucks says I will hear from Dick Clark again before I get any response from the humble public servants who work for me. Five bucks says no journalist will even bother to ask.
The BLS data reconciles perfectly; unemployment drops by 14,800 because 12,200 jobs are added and 2,600 leave the workforce (retire, move out of state, go back to school, etc.). On the other hand, I could find no combination of numbers that can be tortured into a computation of a 24,300 job loss in October/November. If you can crack the code, I will be happy to print the recipe here at Moment of Clarity.
So, what do I think about the BLS report of Wisconsin’s job losses in November? I think they lied; that’s what I think. It would not be the first time.
My doctoral dissertation in 2006 (late bloomer) was a study of government contract bundling and its impact on small businesses. The conventional wisdom at the time was that 34,221 illegal acts of contract bundling had caused the failure of over 15,000 thousand firms since 1990. My thesis was that the problem was actually far worse than the government was reporting, particularly among minority businesses, and I constructed a study which expected to prove how much worse it really was.
What I discovered, without boring you to tears, is that less than two dozen actual cases were reported by contractors victimized by the practice. The whole issue was bogus – a complete fabrication to increase funding for an agency put on the block during Clinton/Gore’s reinventing government initiative. The government’s data did not support the headlines trumpeted by its agency heads – sound familiar?
I was invited to Washington to brief the heads of procurement for all of the national security agencies, was received begrudgingly at Small Business Administration, and was invited to testify at Senator Kerry’s committee on small business. The Senator apparently had misunderstood my research findings, because when his staff was informed that I had disproved the contract bundling myth, he cancelled my testimony. No hard feelings, Mr. Kerry.
My work was honored internationally for its methodology, and I published a couple of journal articles to scrutinize my findings through academic peer review and publication. From time to time someone still contacts me, as my research is still the most recent academic literature on the subject. But it is not my life’s work; I have a company to run, a family to love, friends to laugh with, and a blog to write.
So I am not surprised that the BLS data does not support its agency heads’ pressers. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess at possible reasons why Obama appointees at the Department of Unions might want to propagandize against the nation’s top union buster, Governor Walker. Or perhaps it was just a simple error - two months in a row. Yeah…yeah, that’s the ticket.
And don’t even get on your high horse, Demski’s; it’s not about you. I don’t care if they are Republican, Democrat, or just members of the Permanent Government Workers Party, they say whatever they want if it serves their own interest. If my Libertarian party ever took control, we would soon be corrupted too; human nature does not grant waivers to humans.
That’s why we need to shut it all down; all but the 18 essential services authorized by the Constitution. Put the Department of Labor and its Bureau of Labor Statistics high on the list of first to go. If you want accurate labor statistics, buy them from Manpower; they are a private sector firm that makes their living by accurately assessing job markets. They are not too big to fail, so they have to get it right.
Profit is the cure for the sloth that makes government worse than useless. Of course, that is just my opinion. And thank you, Anonymous, for asking.
“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D. Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.
16 comments:
"It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess at possible reasons why Obama appointees at the Department of Unions might want to propagandize against the nation’s top union buster, Governor Walker. Or perhaps it was just a simple error - two months in a row. Yeah…yeah, that’s the ticket."
Do you think Bill O'Reilly would be worthy of reporting your findings? This information needs to get out to as many people as possible. He claims to be an Independent, whatever that means nowadays.
Good information. thanks.
One question here - I like your conclusion but want to voice my inner devil's advocate to see if there's something missing.
1) Since the BLS numbers there are based on the residence of the person, won't those numbers not match up with the number of jobs actually located inside Wisconsin? If people in Racine, Hudson, Beloit, etc. work across the border, that gets counted in the BLS numbers you link to, but wouldn't get counted in the BLS report of the growth/loss of jobs in Wisconsin, right?
@Tom, that is certainly possible, but would require all of the surrounding states to show the opposite contradictions as Wisconsins. My point was to show the contradiction and to warn against accepting government pronouncements without question. I suspect both October and November numbers will be revised - buried on the back pages someday.
You've outdone yourself. Thank you for the excellent work you put into your blog.
Could it be the "Seasonal Adjustment" factor? One (BLS) might be able to spin things by reporting net job changes NOT seasonally adjusted vs. seasonally adjusted. The data you link to is seasonally adjusted. Also, for some reason I'm getting different (more positive) figures than you, arriving at a net gain of 21,577 jobs from Sept to November when I do the math...
oops, I was extrapolating the total civilian workforce using the number and percent of unemployed persons. Decimal issues caused my numbers to inflate higher than your. I didn't see they had the total workforce size already listed...
Dr Tim, Governor Walker, Senator Johnson, and the GOP delegation in the House need to see your report. If this is true, that's a national scandal.
Dr Tim, Governor Walker, Senator Johnson, and the GOP delegation in the House need to see your report. If this is true, that's a national scandal.
Dear readers/commenters/others...
Please forward this article to the parties that you think should read them. Dr. Tim has done the grunt-work, it's up to us to disseminate it to the folks that can get it out to the public. These are fun to read, but if we don't do anything with the information, we are not doing our part.
I was happy to hear Vicki McKenna discussing this article and mentioning Tim Nerenz this morning. Now, lets get it to the rest of the media.
Awesome work Dr. Tim,
I will send this to others that live in the Peoples Republic of Madison... It is criminal that any information be taken and skewed to benefit a political agenda on EITHER side of the isle...
Another excellent post, only this one's going to be forwarded to my Wisconsin contacts.
I fear Governor Walker is not doing enough to counter the propaganda being spread by the unions and state media outlets.
Dr. Tim
First, I am a new reader to your blog, but find your views enlightening and you have me hooked!
Second, you asked:"I could find no combination of numbers that can be tortured into a computation of a 24,300 job loss in October/November." If you look at the WI DWD website (http://dwd.wisconsin.gov/dwd/news.htm)for monthly announcements, you can get the monthly numbers for both place of residence and place of work. They announce based on place of work, the numbers you used were for place of residence. So, they announced Oct loss of 9,700 and Nov loss of 14,600. That is where they get 24,300 jobs lost. However, the 9700 loss has been revised to a loss of 2400 based on October final numbers, but somehow they still use the -9,700 for October. Hmmm....no agenda there. Also, even though they have monthly adjustments between preliminary numbers and final numbers, the largest swing for 2011 was 3,000 until October when there was a change of 7300 additional jobs than first reported. Hmmm...still no agenda there, especially when you consider how a loss of 9,700 jobs sounds so much worse than a loss of 2,400 jobs during a month when the recall signing effort was starting. Yeah, right, no agenda there. I will wait and see what the final numbers for November are before believing the loss of 14,600 as final. My bet, those will be revised down. Still a somewhat bad trend that there are more losses than gains from July through October, but with all the turmoil in the state, I can understand businesses holding back hiring until they see some stability, IMHO. Still, you point out a very good bias from the BLS. And yes, any adjustments that make the numbers better are not reported by local dead tree papers (no bias there either! lol). Thanks Dr. Tim for your great insights.
UPDATE: I received a reply from my initial request to BLS for an explanation of the contradictory data. Some very nice person referred my question to another very nice person who will check into it.
Thank you Dr. Tim... this is an answer to a question I was thinking about at the Town Hall meeting in Waukesha today (Saturday). I saw the data you mentioned in the BizTimes during the last two months.
I checked the unemployment data by state (after the meeting) and found unemployment in Wisconsin to be below the national average by one point.
Thank you for exposing the truth.
Dr. Tim,
Had to catch up on your blog, out of touch for a week with family issues. Thank you for more clarity. I will share it for sure!!
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