Employment statistics: why so off?

Okay the Bureau of Labor Statistics have released “revised” employment statistics for September and October.   Look at the difference:

September Original: 159,000  Revised: 403,000

October Original: 240,000 Revised: 320,000

What happened?  They claimed that 399,000 jobs were lost when actually it was 723,000.  Did someone spill coffee on a spreadsheet?  That’s not even close.  Lets say they had originally claimed the economy lost a couple hundred thousand jobs for Sept. and then came back and said, oops actually it gained fifty thousand.  Does it kind of make you wonder a few things:

1.  Um, wasn’t there an election happening when these figures were first released? 

2.  What good are these figures if they are so revisable?

3.  Don’t they owe us an explanation as to how they got it so wrong?

November 2008 press release

Graphing the Decline of Unions

The Monthly Labor Review for October published an article that highlighted a series of graphs that powerfully make the case that the union movement is in big trouble; declining membership, mostly older people and government workers and in only four states do union workers make up more than 20% of the workforce.

The other fact?  Union workers made more than non-Union workers in the same professions, unions did a better job providing wage protection to women and other minorities as well.   Yet, some of the failure of the US auto industry is tied to its being weighed down by union contracts.  Companies like United Airlines which is owned by its workers and unionized have not proven terribly successful.  I hope in the Obama era unions are reinvigorated along side the industries where they are strong.

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