Selective Statistics

On today’s show we are talking about the most recent employment report that was published on Friday of last week.

You’ve no doubt heard the saying that you can use statistics selectively to make just about any argument. On today’s show we are going to take a more wholistic view of the US employment report and hopefully construct a more complete view of what we think is happening. Is the government lying? No, I don’t think so. But the conclusions being drawn are definitely the result of spin being put on the numbers.

In the July report it was reported that the economy added 528,000 job and 372,000 jobs in June. These are impressive numbers. The White House proudly claimed that all of the job losses from the pandemic had been officially erased from history. The unemployment rate was down to 3.5% and the economy is strong.

It turns out that the Bureau of Labor and Statistics actually publishes two different employment survey reports at the same time and they have significantly different methodologies and therefore different results.

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Host: Victor Menasce

email: podcast@victorjm.com