Meanwhile, back at the economy
Real Clear Politics has two pieces today about the economy. One is by Morton Zuckerman of U.S. News. It expresses major skepticism about whether we're experiencing, or will soon experience, a recovery. The second is by Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post. It expresses agnosticism on this issue.
Reader Stan Brown offered two thoughts on the jobs/unemployment data discussed in the columns:
"1) If Congress extends benefits and makes it easier and easier to stay on unemployment, any comparison between the present number of people drawing benefits and some number in the past is bogus. Zuckerman’s statement that we have the most drawing unemployment in 20 years is meaningless – we are comparing apples and oranges.
2) Samuelson tells us that the household data and the payroll data are incredibly divergent. Apparently there are two ways we measure the number of employees. We ask employers about their payrolls and we ask households (employees) whether they have jobs. The employees tell us that unemployment is much, much lower. Samuelson says that the payroll data shows a loss of 2.6 million jobs since early 2001. The household data shows a loss of only 108,000 (and a gain of 1.2 million this year). This kind of disparity is enormous. He goes on to cite a Standard and Poor’s analyst who thinks that the disparity is due to businesses hiring “contract” workers which they don’t count on their payroll, but who considered themselves employed since they get paid for working.
My reason for writing is to say that the quality of journalism on this issue has been abominable. Why haven’t we heard anything about the incredibly good news from the household data? Why haven’t we at least heard of the dispute (the administration should have made sure this news was out there)? And why doesn’t an administration defender point out the apples/oranges nature of the unemployment comparisons?"
