Consumer Confidence Soaring

Consumer confidence rose in early January to its highest level since November 2000, dealing another blow to Democratic electoral hopes.
“‘It’s a sign, if anything, that perhaps the labor market improved dramatically in the first couple of weeks of January versus December,’ said Ian Morris, chief economist at HSBC Securities USA in New York.”
This Reuters article refers to the disappointing December jobs report, which said that nationwide, only 1,000 new jobs were added. I’ve always wondered about the accuracy of these job-creation claims. Doesn’t it seem odd that people who write about immigration round off the number of illegal aliens currently in the country, many of them holding jobs, to the nearest million, while economic reports that purport to count jobs claim to have accuracy several orders of magnitude greater? And might there be some connection between the enormous number of uncounted illegal immigrants and the mystifyingly small number of jobs officially being created? Just a thought.
UPDATE: Reader Tom Lane refers to a discrepancy in the government’s employment numbers that we noted once before:
“The government may report employment numbers to a precision of 1000 workers, but they can’t even agree with THEMSELVES to within a few million.
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces a couple of different employment series. The one most often quoted is Total Nonfarm Payrolls from the CES (Current Employment Statistics), which is based on a survey of businesses. They also publish Employment Level from the CPS (Current Population Survey), which is based on a survey of individuals.
“The discrepancies between the two series have been a source of some embarrassment to the BLS. For example, Nonfarm Payrolls show a seasonally adjusted loss of 2,312,000 jobs under Bush, but Employment Level shows a seasonally adjusted GAIN of 689,000 jobs under Bush. The former number is a standard Democrat talking point (usually ’rounded’ to 3 million), while the latter is ignored.”

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