John Crudele tips his hat to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and explains how they’ve finessed the unemployment report:
So I’m going to set the record straight. Here, Mr. President, is what the Labor Department actually said about the February storms’ effect on the job market.
The department explained in its release that “severe winter weather in parts of the country may have affected payroll employment and hours, however, it is not possible to quantify precisely the net impact of the winter storm on employment estimates.”
But in a boxed footnote, the department explained there really wasn’t much of an impact at all because “workers who received pay for any part of the [survey’s] pay period, even one hour, are counted in the February payroll employment figures.”
In last week’s column I told you the criteria was a single day. Now the Labor Department said workers are considered employed even if they get an hour’s pay.
Which of the two storms in the survey period — both of which lasted two days — would have caused a single worker to not have received even one hour of wages over a full pay period?
For the innumerate I should also explain that more people are still losing their jobs. It isn’t good news until more people start getting jobs.
