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To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (159356)	9/22/2003 9:27:47 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164687

Actually, the only adjustment from January that matters (because prior months were not adjusted for it) is the annual adjustment for "intercensal" population change, which brought the population estimates used in the CPS numbers up to date. My mistake - I should have factored that in. But it doesn't eliminate the difference (or even half of it) between CPS and CES job numbers. This adjustment added 575,000 people to the "employed" number (and 40k to the unemployed), so net of that adjustment, jobs still grew by 624k over the last eight months, according to workers themselves. Are you suggesting that those surveyed are lying about their employment status? BTW, the point I'm making here is not that employment is booming, much as you'd like to spin it that way, but that there is strong evidence that there's something wrong with the numbers you, Liz, the media and the Democratic presidential candidates are so focused on - the numbers which say everything's going to hell, but which the market doesn't seem to believe and which conflict with most other economic indicators. For example, that the jobs picture is considerably brighter than the establishment data paints it to be could very well explain why consumer spending, housing and other data have held up while the doomsayers said for the last couple years that they would inevitably collapse. Here's a suggestion - why don't you stop quoting headlines and look at the data. Question the conventional wisdom. Doubt the pundits and pols in their efforts to sell newspapers and stir angry voters. Think outside the box. The "standard" jobs data conflicts with every other indicator of economic strength. Maybe it's smarter to ask "why?" than to say all the other data is bunk.