"A couple of things about last Friday’s job report. The seasonally adjusted increase was 216,000. The unadjusted number was 25,000. What this comes down to is how much you trust the BLS’ modeling of what is happening in the economy. My own impression is that it is assuming we are in a fairly standard recession-recovery cycle. I don’t think this is the case. The recession wasn’t like anything we have seen since the 1930s. And a common complaint I make is that no economists are looking at the economy as a kleptocracy or in kleptonomic terms. So the BLS modeling assumptions are almost certainly wrong as regards job creation.
Also as I have said, we need to look for corroboration for the BLS stand on job creation. We should be able to find this in two places. The first is in our everyday experience. If the job situation is improving, then we should begin to see more local stories about more hiring and new businesses. The second is in other statistics that the government keeps such as hours, wages, capacity and capacity utilization, and tax receipts. I don’t see in either of these evidence that there is a lot of new hiring going on.
Put simply in the absence of corroborating evidence I would question the reliability and accuracy of this BLS jobs number."
Doug, you say the BLS folks are reliable. Comment?
Joanna