October 07, 2012

Job reports off by a factor of eight! MSM yawns.

If you're a Democrat you surely heard the wonderful news:  the unemployment figures released by the Labor Department on Friday showed the UE rate for September was lower than it had been for the past three years.

Specifically, it allegedly dropped from 8.1% all the way to 7.8%--which I understand is the figure when Obama took office.

If this were true it would be great news for Obama and all Democrats, as it would suggest the economy is indeed recovering nicely.  Which would greatly improve Obie's chance of winning that all-important second term.

But of course that number is a complete load of crap.  Here's the evidence, and you can decide for yourself.

Every month the Labor Dept. takes the pulse of the economy in two ways: it asks 410,000 businesses how many people they've hired in the last month; and it does a phone survey of 50,000 households, asking if anyone living there has been hired in the last month.

Now, both those numbers represent *very* large surveys.  In an honest, random sample of 50,000 respondents, the probability of any measurement missing the true average by more than a percent or so is extremely small.  A survey of 410,000 respondents would be expected to nail the true value of the whole population within half a percent or so.

And what did these two different surveys find?

The "household survey" allegedly found that about 873,000 new jobs had been created in September.  If true that would indeed cut unemployment by a significant amount.

But the much larger (and thus presumably more accurate) "business survey" found that just 114,000 new jobs had been created.

Oh, you say you never heard that second figure?  Wow, what a surprise.

That would be because all the members of the Lying Media reported the results like this:
The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent last month, dropping below 8 percent for the first time in nearly four years and giving President Barack Obama a potential boost with the election a month away.
The rate declined from 8.1 percent because the number of people who said they were employed soared by 873,000 - an encouraging sign for an economy that's been struggling to create enough jobs.

The number of unemployed Americans is now 12.1 million, the fewest since January 2009.
The Labor Department said employers added 114,000 jobs in September. 

See the trick?  Publishers know most people only read the first couple of paragraphs of most stories, so they put the far more favorable 873,000 figure near the top of the story, with lots of good words around it.  The contradictory number--a disaster for Obama--is only mentioned several 'grafs later.

The overwhelming majority of readers pick up on the favorable first number.  But because the 114,000 figure seems to (and does) contradict the first, the brain simply ignores it.

I have yet to find a single article in the Lying Media even raising the question of why the two numbers--supposedly measuring the same thing in different ways--disagree by a factor of almost eight.  Why would the MSM have no interest in calling attention to such a huge discrepancy in the alleged findings of the two surveys, when they're ostensibly measuring the same thing--let alone finding the explanation for it?

If a Republican were president, which figure do you think the media would tout, and publish in the first or second graf?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home