Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 4, 2011 22:01:30 GMT -6
The BLS did an annual revision of numbers which makes it nearly impossible to determine why the unemployment rate went down. On first glance, it appears that they simply "dropped-out" 504K workers from the participating labor force. At least, that's the way Briefing.com appears to be describing it.
Table A1, which is the link in the signature line of all my posts, is not currently available. This makes it even more difficult to figure out what happened.
According to the BLS, it appears that the total number of working age Americans increased by 162K in January. "Appears", however, is the key word.
It looks like the BLS actually recorded a -185K fall in the civilian noninstitutionalized working age population, which is very hard to believe. Then they subtracted their revision of -347K from that number to get +162K. But I'm not at all sure about this. The explanation & numbers can be found at the following link:
www.bls.gov/cps/empsit_tablec.htm
Briefing.com says the following:
"The BLS incorporated new annual population adjustments for 2011. The new statistics lowered the civilian labor force by 504,000. At the same time, the BLS did not adjust the number of workers employed or the labor force participation rate.
The 2010 levels were not readjusted by the BLS. Therefore, the lower 2011 labor force number combined with a stable number of employed workers resulted in a substantial 0.4 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate between December 2010 and January 2011.
This was purely a statistical change that leads us to believe the 2010 unemployment rate data may have been inflated as a result of poor seasonal adjustments. As a result, even though the unemployment rate suggests a significant improvement in labor conditions, employment growth was fairly flat between December and January."
Below is a copy of the chart from Briefing.com showing the numbers they've posted:
Table A1, which is the link in the signature line of all my posts, is not currently available. This makes it even more difficult to figure out what happened.
According to the BLS, it appears that the total number of working age Americans increased by 162K in January. "Appears", however, is the key word.
It looks like the BLS actually recorded a -185K fall in the civilian noninstitutionalized working age population, which is very hard to believe. Then they subtracted their revision of -347K from that number to get +162K. But I'm not at all sure about this. The explanation & numbers can be found at the following link:
www.bls.gov/cps/empsit_tablec.htm
Briefing.com says the following:
"The BLS incorporated new annual population adjustments for 2011. The new statistics lowered the civilian labor force by 504,000. At the same time, the BLS did not adjust the number of workers employed or the labor force participation rate.
The 2010 levels were not readjusted by the BLS. Therefore, the lower 2011 labor force number combined with a stable number of employed workers resulted in a substantial 0.4 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate between December 2010 and January 2011.
This was purely a statistical change that leads us to believe the 2010 unemployment rate data may have been inflated as a result of poor seasonal adjustments. As a result, even though the unemployment rate suggests a significant improvement in labor conditions, employment growth was fairly flat between December and January."
Below is a copy of the chart from Briefing.com showing the numbers they've posted: