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The Spectacle Blog
LAS VEGAS -- Taking questions from liberal activists at the Netroots Nation conference this morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a number of claims about Obama administration jobs data that don't hold up to close scrutiny.
"In the first 8 months, by the end of August, of 2010, more jobs will be created under Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress than the 8 years of the Bush administration," Pelosi claimed.
Based on an analysis of official employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I can begin to get an idea of what she might be basing her claim on.
During the entire Bush administration, which I define as February 2001 though January 2009, the economy added a net of 1 million jobs. In the first six months of 2010, the economy added 882,000 jobs, and so she's assuming it will surpass the Bush mark by the end of August.
However, her claim falters on several levels. First, we don't have actual jobs data through August. Second, a lot of the job gains during the first half of this year were temporary Census jobs.
Finally, by starting her analysis this year, she ignores the nearly 4 million jobs that were lost from February 2009 through December 2009. Pelosi would probably argue that Obama inherited a mess from Bush, so 2009 numbers shouldn't count. But Bush inherited a slowing economy, too. There were 1.7 million job losses in 2001. Thus, if we were to give Bush the same pass for job losses during his first year in office, then the economy would have added 2.7 million jobs in his final 7 years -- far more than Obama could hope to add in the next few months.
During her talk, Pelosi also made the claim that the economic stimulus bill "saved or created 3.6 million jobs."
Yet that's a number that's completely made up by the administration, and even Christina Romer, chair of the Obama administration's Council of Economic Advisers, admitted to me earlier this year that it was hard to accurately make these sorts of economic forecasts:
"I will be the first to admit that none of us have a crystal ball, and you're absolutely right," Romer told me. "What I do, what any professional economist does, what any professional forecaster does, is to use everything we have from historical relationships, to knowledge of economic theory, to advanced statistical methods to try to do the best we can to say, ‘what does the data suggest about the path we were on?' And things like that. So, fundamentally what you're saying is, ‘This is hard,' and I would agree completely. That's why my office spends a lot of time on this. That's why professional forecasters across both the government and in private industry spend a lot of time trying to do the best that they can. You're right, we are often wrong. But I think after the fact, we are often correct."
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More Blog Posts by Philip Klein
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/07/24/pelosi-distorts-jobs-data-at-n
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Yosemeti Sam| 7.25.10 @ 9:43AM
Ah - the WWOTW offering her special brew of Kool Aid flavored employment statistics.
BTW, senator Coburn - this WWOTW is no lady let alone a 'nice' lady.
Oldefarte| 7.25.10 @ 11:21AM
What the lying PIG FROM SF fails to mention is that the jobs 'created' or 'saved' were PUBLIC/GOVERNMENT jobs, not PRIVATE/NON-GOVERNMENT ones. So we now have eight millions more TEACHERS, STREET REPAIR WORKERS, GARBAGE COLLECTORS, LOCAL WELFARE CHECK DISPENSERS, COMMUNITY ACTION OMSBUDSMENS, etc.[ and TAXPAYERS are funding their paychecks] Thanks, Nancy!!!!!!!!!!
Dixie Pixie| 7.25.10 @ 2:45PM
The Democratic “Pollyanna” strategy continues.
The purpose of the strategy is to convince the public the current economic conditions are better than the economic conditions under Republican leadership.
The Democratic leadership is trying to coverup the current economic depression with false and deceptive numerology and symbolism.
Speaker Pelosi is trying to convince everyone that 12+% unemployment is better than 4% under the last Bush administration.
She is trying to convince everybody that a private sector credit crunch is better than a surplus of credit.
In short, Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership the are trying mitigate the next election losses by hiding the current economic conditions.
With the collusion with the MSM, the Democratic Party may pull it off.
All that is required is the public to believe the Press and not what the public can see.
With any luck the Democratic Party will not see the oncoming beer-truck and get nailed with gusto.
Mark MacInnis| 7.26.10 @ 9:09AM
I am in possession of a memo which illustrates in its cynical insidiousness how the Obama administration is manipulating jobs statistics to enhance their performance metrics. Which is the same as lying.
A close personal friend works for a medical research company. A not insignificant portion of the stimulus funds was given to companies sponsoring medical research, in the hope of creating high-tech jobs in the research field.
My friend is an financial analyst and one of his more tedious tasks is the completion of after-the-fact reporting to government agencies on the results of the projects. One of the key pieces of data is "number of jobs created by this project."
Recently, when he requested guidance from the government agency as to how best to calculate this data, he was told. "Count anyone who did any work on any project after this date as a newly created job." Now in his company, their are perhaps 400 associates working on as many as 200 projects at a time. Each project has a team of perhaps 2 dozen people directly involved as "chargeable" time to the project. Many more support staff handle paperwork, conduct protocols, etc. When asking for clarification, my friend was told to count up everyone who "touched" any stimulus-funded program in any way, and report them as a "newly created job". He had over 50 stimulus funded jobs to report upon. He did the math, and found that if he were to report the way the government bureau WANTED him to report, he would have reported more than 2,500 new jobs created by the stimulus. Keep in mind, the total employment with the company was 400 or so, and this had been greatly reduced from 2008 to 2010 due to the recession. So, in an environment where real job loss of perhaps 100 losses incurred in this company, the government ENCOURAGED the company to report TWENTY FIVE TIMES that many as actually gained. Think about that for a minute, every time you hear a government agency or official spouting off about job creation. These people not only DON'T have a clue, they are fostering an environment where all measurements of government "efficiency" and "effectiveness" are fabricated.
What did my friend do? As a conservative man of integrity, he put "None" in the space for the "number of jobs created" on the survey questionnaire. The reports all came back to him as "incomplete." Zero, apparently, was not a number they understood.....
Paglia guy| 7.26.10 @ 10:37AM
Donna Brazille lied about these jobs numbers yesterday on ABC, and the hapless "conservative" on the panel, Stephen Hayes, couldn't rebut. I've already written his publication urging his firing. We have to be prepared for this guano, people! Have your facts and be ready to rebut these revisionists at every step!