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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Red Heeler who wrote (435521)	7/29/2003 5:04:02 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 769667

I am not in a position to evaluate the unemployment statistics. I am not sure why they might not over- report as well as under- report, in certain instances, nor am I sure of the force of some of his cavils. For example, seasonal adjustment makes sense, considering that some people only seek part time work while out of school or saving for Christmas. Also, such surveys do not depend on actual enumeration, but on statistical sampling. If the sampling remains statistically valid, it doesn't necessarily matter whether they reduced the number of households surveyed in a given area. But even very good surveys rarely get better than a +or- 4% margin of error. If you take that in conjunction with people who hold two jobs, you probably have explained the discrepancy noted in the column (129million/138million). Finally, unless there were an historical adjustment for guessing at those who gave up looking for work, it is worthless to factor that in as a comparison. So, overall, I agree that one has to take the figures with a grain of salt, but they seem to me to be useful benchmarks, nevertheless.......