[lbo-talk] Ebay as the new American Jobs Machine!!

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Sep 17 07:40:50 PDT 2006


On Sep 16, 2006, at 10:11 PM, Stephen E Philion wrote:


> Max and Doug, it's time to see the new wisdom...
>
> http://article.nationalreview.com/?
> q=OTk0YzMzYzI3YWFkYmE5MzdhN2I5ODIxZjY0MWQ2MTk=
>
> Our Stealth Jobs Boom
> Why the household survey deserves more attention.

The right loves this argument. Several problems. The two surveys have different definitions of employment, and annual changes in the population estimates used to inflate the sample results into national estimates make direct comparisons difficult. On comparable definitions, and adjusted for population changes, the HH survey is 1.4 million, not 3 million, ahead of the establishment survey. Also, the HH survey uses a smaller sample (60,000 households vs. several million employing establishments) and is less reliable. (CEPR argues that the household survey misses a lot of poor/minority people, and so gives a rosier picture of reality than reality deserves.) The establishment survey is benchmarked every year against unemployment insurance system records, which have almost-100% coverage of the employment universe, and semi-benchmarked every quarter against similar records, and adjustments in recent years have been very modest. This is cheerleading bullshit.

Doug



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