“We need the labor board to explain the numbers.” says pundit holding BLS report explaining numbers

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Every time the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases a jobs report, Morning Joe’s panel takes time to specifically discuss them in the third hour of their broadcast. During this segment Joe Scarborough quite often cites BLS numbers from his time in office during the Clinton presidency and Reagan’s years in office as fact, as any sane human being should. These numbers are used as guidelines for adjusting unemployment benefits, employment programs and all types of public and private sector policy.

This thing I can’t make sense of makes no sense.

Today, when the number was released and it was 7.8% Scarborough said something felt odd about the jobs report. he literally said “these numbers don’t add up”. They literally do add up. BLS revises previous numbers every month. Mike Barnicle admits he is “totally unqualified” to give his opinion on the matter, and Joe agrees that all of them are. That’s odd being that they have been giving their opinion on the matter for about 5 years whenever the number is released. Willie Giest, says that no one on the panel is suggesting that the Obama administration corrupted the jobs report, what they are suggesting is that BLS’s report makes no sense without knowing how to make sense of it.

“We need the labor department to explain.” It’s a report, BLS explains the number in the report.

“This is an inexact science.” Yes, forecasting and estimation is inexact by definition. Which is what BLS does from a variety of data sets is inexact, but precise and a very close approximation. Then Joe insists there has to be a “better way to do this”. The better way to get employment numbers would be to require every employer to report their payroll in full to BLS every month. That’s not happening.

That’s not as bad as Jack Welch who basically accused Obama and Axelrod of sending some hipster thugs or FOI henchmen or LGBT cat burglars to strong arm the BLS report guy to juke the numbers for Obama’s benefit after the debate.

Who knew the key to Six Sigma black belt ninja gaiden enlightenment is: denial!

As if Obama couldn’t have used positive below 8% job numbers any other time between the passing of the stimulus and the Friday morning! (note: Mika’s job in all of this is to apologize for Jack Welch’s wild accusation)

After the Dow Jones Industrial Average started rising after the first few months of the Obama Administration, no one accused Chicago of heading to the Dow to juke those numbers. In fact their mental image of President Obama (Chicago Barry) had nothing to do with the rise in the Dow. These numbers based on speculation, were gospel. But only when it fell under Obama in 2009:

Dear Mr. President,

Unfortunately, it’s true. The stock market doesn’t like you.

Only one month in and investors are giving up. Another 30% haircut would put the Dow at 5000.

That’s all you need to know here. They are really shocked that in fact the Obama’s administration and the “uncertainty goblin” weren’t the end of Democracy and apple pie.