Media Continues to Misreport US Unemployment Numbers(wolfstreet.com)
wolfstreet.com
Media Continues to Misreport US Unemployment Numbers
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/07/23/media-continues-to-misreport-unemployment-claims-31-8-million-people-on-state-federal-unemployment-insurance-week-18-of-u-s-labor-market-collapse/
10 comments
> There are 160 million people in the civilian labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (not that this number can be trusted)
I really don't understand why people write articles using data they don't find trustworthy, yet assert that their own article is trustworthy. Garbage-in, garbage-out. I see this a lot when it comes to unemployment in particular.
What's more likely, everyone whose job it is to report on unemployment figures gets them wrong, while some rando on the internet is the only one to get it right, or the other way around?
You can go here [1] and select number of people who have been unemployed for various durations. Number of people unemployed for between 5 and 14 weeks has decreased rather dramatically in June. Granted, the figures are still absurdly high, but it does suggest that people are getting back to work.
Also, take a close look at "Unemployed for 15 Weeks & over" figures from 2010. The economy maintained ~8-9 million unemployed people for years during the great recession. So the 11 million that's being reported now is high, but they aren't so much worse than our last recession.
[1] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln
I really don't understand why people write articles using data they don't find trustworthy, yet assert that their own article is trustworthy. Garbage-in, garbage-out. I see this a lot when it comes to unemployment in particular.
What's more likely, everyone whose job it is to report on unemployment figures gets them wrong, while some rando on the internet is the only one to get it right, or the other way around?
You can go here [1] and select number of people who have been unemployed for various durations. Number of people unemployed for between 5 and 14 weeks has decreased rather dramatically in June. Granted, the figures are still absurdly high, but it does suggest that people are getting back to work.
Also, take a close look at "Unemployed for 15 Weeks & over" figures from 2010. The economy maintained ~8-9 million unemployed people for years during the great recession. So the 11 million that's being reported now is high, but they aren't so much worse than our last recession.
[1] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln
TLDR; Rushed journalists didn't understand complicated new reporting format at first.
He didn't say data was untrustworthy, he said the reporters were in a hurry.
Per author: Reporters have a 30 minute window between receiving the report and the expiration of embargo. The format changed because we are giving a new kind of unemployment payment. The data is complicated and the aggregate of the new PEUC+state unemployment claims number is several pages into the report.
He didn't say data was untrustworthy, he said the reporters were in a hurry.
Per author: Reporters have a 30 minute window between receiving the report and the expiration of embargo. The format changed because we are giving a new kind of unemployment payment. The data is complicated and the aggregate of the new PEUC+state unemployment claims number is several pages into the report.
My quote is one of a few in that article where he specifically calls out the BLS data as untrustworthy as a whole. He's absolutely not just taking issue with journalists.
He makes the complaint you identified, that the journalist are misreporting figures. But then he says that the labor department is intentionally misleading people. He then complains about how seasonal adjustments shouldn't be applied, when is maybe fair, but the difference is literally a rounding error between the two -- 1.4 million (seasonally adjusted) vs 1.4 million (unajusted).
He then proceeds to say that the BLS civilian labor force numbers can't be trusted. Discusses how "fraudulant claims" are inflating numbers. Then provides his own figure (sourced from BLS) is more accurate than the, "nonsense produced these days by the Bureau of Labor Statistics."
He makes the complaint you identified, that the journalist are misreporting figures. But then he says that the labor department is intentionally misleading people. He then complains about how seasonal adjustments shouldn't be applied, when is maybe fair, but the difference is literally a rounding error between the two -- 1.4 million (seasonally adjusted) vs 1.4 million (unajusted).
He then proceeds to say that the BLS civilian labor force numbers can't be trusted. Discusses how "fraudulant claims" are inflating numbers. Then provides his own figure (sourced from BLS) is more accurate than the, "nonsense produced these days by the Bureau of Labor Statistics."
Ok. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the author. Let's take those quotes in context from the conclusion of the article:
"There are numerous factors that overstate and understate the actual number of unemployed, and we’re not able to pin them all down. I mentioned seasonal adjustments as one of those factors.
But there are also fraudulent claims that overstate claims data. And then there are claims that have been denied for various reasons, often due to mismatched information from the employer that take weeks or months to sort out. And they would understate unemployment. Then there are states that still don’t process all federal claims. And even states that do process them, do so inconsistently. Then there are people who don’t qualify for unemployment insurance, and when they lose their work, they don’t count here at all.
But give or take maybe 1 million people, the total number of unemployed still hovers around 32 million. That’s the number to go by, not the fallen-off-the-cliff nonsense produced these days by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its now ludicrously distorted survey-based jobs report."
I take "there are also fraudulent claims that overstate claims data" to mean that some non-zero number of "fraudulent claims" presumably are counted in the set of all unemployment claims, and that this is one of several subtleties in the data that might contribute to marginally both under- and over-reporting.
It seems to me that BLS is just one of the reporting entities, and that the survey results they provide are regarded by the author as incomplete an unreliable self-report, but not that all of the various sources are providing unreliable data (although it’s not clear exactly how it is all collated). Is that incorrect?
"There are numerous factors that overstate and understate the actual number of unemployed, and we’re not able to pin them all down. I mentioned seasonal adjustments as one of those factors.
But there are also fraudulent claims that overstate claims data. And then there are claims that have been denied for various reasons, often due to mismatched information from the employer that take weeks or months to sort out. And they would understate unemployment. Then there are states that still don’t process all federal claims. And even states that do process them, do so inconsistently. Then there are people who don’t qualify for unemployment insurance, and when they lose their work, they don’t count here at all.
But give or take maybe 1 million people, the total number of unemployed still hovers around 32 million. That’s the number to go by, not the fallen-off-the-cliff nonsense produced these days by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its now ludicrously distorted survey-based jobs report."
I take "there are also fraudulent claims that overstate claims data" to mean that some non-zero number of "fraudulent claims" presumably are counted in the set of all unemployment claims, and that this is one of several subtleties in the data that might contribute to marginally both under- and over-reporting.
It seems to me that BLS is just one of the reporting entities, and that the survey results they provide are regarded by the author as incomplete an unreliable self-report, but not that all of the various sources are providing unreliable data (although it’s not clear exactly how it is all collated). Is that incorrect?
I think one component is 5 years ago there was little reason to doubt the official BLS numbers or even most reports from the federal government like FBI crime statistics. The official/headlining unemployment rates have always been based on data points that were not ideal or have evolved and need review. For example, the debate between U-2 and U-6 rates as the goto number in a post 2008 crisis economy to better count under-employment or those working 2-3 jobs or gig roles. Maybe we do need to overhaul reporting and weight given to certain unemployment types to align with these changes. Any updates need to be reviewed, tracked, and rolled out slowly as the monthly reports carry a huge impact.
The recent big change change is, of course, an administration that will replace career non partisan officials with yes men loyalists or simply comment on and politicise things that were left apolitical. You can see this most egregiously early on with how FBI crime data was withheld to (maybe) further political goals. Instead of letting the experts create and send out reports on the same data points as the last decade for easy comparison, or working on changes based on their expert decisions and long term studies, we have departments driven by optics and value or loyalty to the president above all else.
Has this impacted BLS and BLS data? I'm not sure. Has this corroded trust and reliability of BLS and other government reports? I'd say yes, absolutely. It took lawsuits by media to reveal who got PPP loans, trillions of taxpayer dollars, with millions going to administration friends and even cabinet members. It took lawsuits to get the same FBI crime data we got under Obama. Who is to say we don't need to sue BLS for the underlying data they report on to confirm it lines up?
As far as I know from my studies in economics and rabid news reading over the last decade, the BLS has never been a political department or had their reports used as more than statistics by the president. It has not had numbers criticized or called wrong by the president. It has been a wonderfully data oriented group left independent like the Fed. Trump has been unprecedented in his attacks against his own government. He also pulled a 180 after the election, railing on Obama for jobs numbers that were, of course, perfect once Trump was sworn in or vice versa.
U-3 vs U-6 unemployment: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080415/true-...
Trump and the BLS: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/trump-mov...
Changes to FBI reporting: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-first-fbi-crime-rep...
PPP data lawsuits: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/12/sba-foia-...
The recent big change change is, of course, an administration that will replace career non partisan officials with yes men loyalists or simply comment on and politicise things that were left apolitical. You can see this most egregiously early on with how FBI crime data was withheld to (maybe) further political goals. Instead of letting the experts create and send out reports on the same data points as the last decade for easy comparison, or working on changes based on their expert decisions and long term studies, we have departments driven by optics and value or loyalty to the president above all else.
Has this impacted BLS and BLS data? I'm not sure. Has this corroded trust and reliability of BLS and other government reports? I'd say yes, absolutely. It took lawsuits by media to reveal who got PPP loans, trillions of taxpayer dollars, with millions going to administration friends and even cabinet members. It took lawsuits to get the same FBI crime data we got under Obama. Who is to say we don't need to sue BLS for the underlying data they report on to confirm it lines up?
As far as I know from my studies in economics and rabid news reading over the last decade, the BLS has never been a political department or had their reports used as more than statistics by the president. It has not had numbers criticized or called wrong by the president. It has been a wonderfully data oriented group left independent like the Fed. Trump has been unprecedented in his attacks against his own government. He also pulled a 180 after the election, railing on Obama for jobs numbers that were, of course, perfect once Trump was sworn in or vice versa.
U-3 vs U-6 unemployment: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080415/true-...
Trump and the BLS: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/trump-mov...
Changes to FBI reporting: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-first-fbi-crime-rep...
PPP data lawsuits: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/12/sba-foia-...
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Political agendas
1. The federal claims are ones that would not ordinarily be accepted for State unemployment (e.g. contract workers). It would be irresponsible to compare UI claims YoY that have vastly different criteria.
2. That being said, obviously there is increased unemployment amongst people who would ordinarily not qualify for UI.
3. Seasonal adjustments are small, why even mention them.
4. None of this is the BLS Unemployment survey numbers from the Current Population Survey (the "headline" unemployment rate you see in the news), which is exactly that; a survey that asks people if they are unemployed/underemployed/seeking work. (Which has its own, quite separate methodologies.) [1]
[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm