Sunday, August 9, 2009

Unemployment is down, Hurray

The official un employment figures show a slight (0.1%) improvement this month. Then the Lehrer Newshour spent a lot of time explaining about how this was a statistical fluke, and if you looked at the real figures things are worse, and on and on. Seems like the Newshour would have been happier with worse unemployment numbers.
For me, I want the un employment numbers computed the same way this month as they were last month and the month before. Doesn't matter if the method has some problems, I just want to see if the economy is getting better or worse. If you change the accounting rules, you change the results. I want the results to reflect changes in the real economy, not changes in the way the statistics are computed.
I wonder why the Newhour seemed unhappy that the economy might be getting better, or at least not still getting worse.

No comments: