where does the shadowstats.com part come in to play with this thread?
is it carryover from some other thread?

 

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Funny, even when people do provide proof in numbers, etc, you still claim to be correct and infallible.

 

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The 2nd graph BT posted was from shadowstats.com


Edit
I'm not on anyone's side here but if all you experts think that the Govt doesn't skew the numbers to look better, you're crazier than BT...

 

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ahhh...i was just paying attention to the .gov links.

 

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Bam!

 

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Oh how embarrassing. BT made a mountain out of a mole hill, a prime example of how quickly self-proclaimed economic experts show their foolishness. The .3% change in participation rate is actually around 0%, as the drop was from the BLS making a once-a-decade adjustment for the census.

http://spectator.org/blog/2012/02/03/participation-rate-issue-less

"In particular, Durden says that the civilian non-institutional population rose by 1.7 million month-over-month but doesn't mention that almost all of that increase was due to an adjustment by Bureau of Labor Statistics based on the results of the 2010 census, plus smaller annual adjustments.

From the BLS report:
The adjustment increased the estimated size of the civilian noninstitutional population in December by 1,510,000, the civilian labor force by 258,000, employment by 216,000, unemployment by 42,000, and persons not in the labor force by 1,252,000. Although the total unemployment rate was unaffected, the labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio were each reduced by 0.3 percentage point. This was because the population increase was primarily among persons 55 and older and, to a lesser degree, persons 16 to 24 years of age. Both these age groups have lower levels of labor force participation than the general population.

In other words, the participation rate (employment-population ratio) was reported to have dropped by 0.3%, exactly the amount of participation rate "drop" created by changing the population number used in the calculation (due to updated census data.) Without this once-a-decade adjustment, the change in participation rate would have been reported as...wait for it...zero.

I don't want to overstate the significance of Durden's oversight, which conservative voices around the media and the web are also making, namely the idea that the participation rate dropped 0.3 percent and the labor force dropped more than 1.2 million in the past month. Those things are simply not true no matter how loudly people scream "conspiracy" and "propaganda." (Having been trading financial markets for about 25 years, I've heard these same accusations about economic data being manipulated to help the incumbent president -- whether Democrat or Republican -- so many times, they just bore me now.)"

 

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anybody that believes that we are solidly out of the recession yet needs to take the horse blinders off.
this economy is just one slip away from falling off the cliff again.

 

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OMg biy moar gold this horrbl news¡

Its not only this but baby boomers are dropping out of the job market at a clip of about 15000 per day, every single Jan there is a drop in labor force because of seasonal work and companies do most of their layoffs in December to avoid a mountain of tax crap, insurances, etc etc. This is all crap we learned in like 10th grade economics, I have no idea why BT is posting it because its too stupid for even him to believe.

 

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Oh oh I know.

10th grade economics is above his level!

(Or he's just playing idiot to troll people.)

 

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