| Topic Name: |
When side-jobs hurt your chances.. |
| Message Name: |
BLS - L = BS |
| Date Posted: |
08/23/2004 |
| In Reply To: |
The headline, much like the rest of the "article" is false. The only source you give is an LA Times article which you don??t properly cite or post. The fact that you think the BLS is magically ??hiding the truth?? at this point in time as opposed to the last 60 years is laughable at best.
The article doesn??t ??simplies?? (sic) the point at all. What it does do is lie about the way that data is collected by the BLS. If you had bothered to read the links that I posted you would see (as I said in my original email) that your benefits have nothing to do with the unemployment rate. The way that the BLS calculates unemployment is by a household survey of 60,000 people each month. If you know even basic statistics you would realize that this high of a sample size is extremely accurate. Just as a point of reference the major polling firms use around 1,000 for their opinion polls.
The fact that you now know this and still keep your ??article?? on your website shows how much journalist integrity you have.
Cheers,
John
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| Message: |
we can agree to disagree john.
did you read the stories today about the
new "labor laws" re: overtime? everyone
agrees -- these new, sweeping
laws are "unclear." see the trend?
you are saying that the BLS data is correct,
i'm saying it is not. 60,000 households
would be significant if they were polled at
random. this is a flaw.
as you read the story in question, you also
see that i use both BLS stats, as well as
the LAT's stats. and it is up to the reader
to weigh both sides. the european union
uses actual numbers of people -- they are
not (only a) sampling.
listing the "los angeles times" as a publication
is sufficient enough for a news story as
would be the AP, or the BBC. the LAT is
the only major publication at this point in
time keeping track of the number of unemployed.
for the simple version (7 month example)
in the story, the data was taken directly
from BLS :-) the number of employed,
the number who lost jobs, and the number who
found jobs. magically (or not) we start with
100 people and end with 88 employed, but
the unemployment rate falls back to 4 percent
after a high of 6 percent during the period
used.
no matter how much one wants to believe the feds... BLS data is
not fully baked. we are not in a booming
economy my friend despite the election year
rhetoric.
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