“There
was a motive to create good news after Barack Obama's abysmal performance at
the first 2012 presidential debate… One way to do that is fake key
economic indicators in favor of Obama.”
Thursday,
October 11, 2012
by Dan Crosby of The Daily Pen
NEW
YORK, NY
- The state of California has the largest population of any state in
America. It has an economy which, if it were an independent nation, would
rank in the top 10 in the world.
It
also has one of the highest rates of unemployment in America, above 10%.
In some counties in the state’s central agricultural region, unemployment is
around 25%.
Considering
these metrics, one would think it might be necessary for a federal government
report on the national labor rate to include the Golden State.
One
would think this, unless you are a democrat seeking re-election by padding
job numbers to make it appear like your liberal economic policies are working
when they are not.
After this week’s surprisingly positive jobless claims
number was released, three things happened according to Business Insider.
1. Lots of people felt better about the economy
2. Democrats cheered because they thought the
number would help Obama
3. Republicans seized on confusing reports
that the numbers had "excluded claims from one large state" (probably
California) and blasted the number as wrong and misleading.
Since then, the argument has raged on, and there have
been a variety of different reports and interpretations.
Well, we're glad to say that we've finally
gotten to the bottom of what happened.
We spoke to a source at the Labor Department. According
to this source, who is an analyst at the Department, here's what happened:
- ALL STATES WERE INCLUDED in this week's jobless
claims. Assertions that "a large state" was excluded from the
report are patently false.
However, dissenters are not saying California was
excluded. They are saying that California did not provide its state labor
statistics before the deadline required by the publisher of this particular
report. Of course, California was not
excluded. It was included and the number published was 0. Zero
because California did not provide statistics. Here’s how economists explain:
- It
is likely that some of the jobless claims in one large
state--California--were not included in the claims reported to the
Department of Labor this week. This happens occasionally, our source says.
When a state's jobless claims bureau is short-staffed, sometimes the state
does not process all of the claims that came in during the week in time to
get them to the DOL. The source believes that this is what happened this
week.
- The
California claims that were not processed in time to get into this week's
jobless report will appear in future reports, most likely next week's or
the following weeks. In other words, those reports might be modestly
higher than expected.
- The
source believes that the number of California claims that were not
processed totaled about 15,000-25,000. Thus, if one were to
"normalize" the overall not-seasonally-adjusted jobless claims
number, it would increase by about 15,000-25,000.
- This
week's "normalized" jobless claims number, therefore, would be
about 355,000-365,000, not the 339,000 that was reported. This compares to
the 370,000 consensus expectation.
In other words, had all of California's jobless claims
been processed in time to make the jobless-claims release, this jobless number
would still have been better than economists were expecting--but not as much
better as it appeared.
Again, the as-yet-unprocessed claims will appear in
future reports. So next week's number may well be higher than expected.
So, who's right about today's jobless claims number?
Everyone's right!
- Jobless claims were better than expected, even after
adjusting for an unusual anomaly
- There was an unusual anomaly that made this week's
jobless claims look better than they would otherwise have been.
Of course, there was a motive to create
good news after Barack Obama's abysmal performance at the first 2012
presidential debate, just before the jobs reports came out. One way to do
that is fake key economic indicators in favor of Obama.
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