Morning stats from Barron's
...No better example of what we mean than one of our favorite bugaboos, the so-called birth/death model, employed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to capture, as part of its monthly report on employment, jobs created by new businesses. Purely by coincidence, we're sure, that calculation, hypothetical rather than substantive, has been adding appreciably, with rare exceptions, to the reported monthly payroll numbers.
Such enhancements have been particularly suspect in recent months as the recessionary chill put the kibosh on job creation in the private sector. In March, for example, the official tally put the jobs-lost total at 80,000. Bad enough, especially if your job happens to be one of the 80,000. But, in fact, except for the fortuitous (or something) but plainly mythical 142,000 additions provided by the birth/death model, job losses would have swelled to 222,000. Which, at the very least, would make a much more graphic headline and induce serious palpitations among the powers-that-be...
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