August 26, 2004
a quiet little study...
From USAToday:
The jobs numbers that you're not hearing about By Timothy Kane and Andrew GrossmanThe BLS has that other survey, of households. That one says there are "2 million more working Americans under President Bush than ever before.."The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently snuck out a telling confession beneath everyone's radar: Its flagship payroll survey is likely undercounting hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Most economic observers were too busy fretting over the lackluster gain of 32,000 payroll jobs in July to take notice of the other positive indicators, let alone the quiet little study that acknowledges payrolls have a problem.
The study describes how job-changing can inflate the payroll survey's numbers artificially. When worker turnover is brisk, as in the late 1990s, millions of workers are counted twice when they switch jobs. About 3.9 million people changed employers during a typical month during the 1990s, but only 3.1 million do so now....
(Thanks to Pejman)
Posted by John Weidner at August 26, 2004 5:24 PM
