Who Is Standard & Poor’s To Dictate America On Debt Terms?

Robert Reich has some solid points on the debt ceiling debate:

“But Standard & Poor’s has gone a step further: It’s warned it might lower the nation’s credit rating even if Democrats and Republicans make a deal to raise the debt ceiling. Standard & Poor’s insists any deal must also contain a credible, bipartisan plan to reduce the nation’s long-term budget deficit by $4 trillion — something neither Harry Reid’s nor John Boehner’s plans do.

If Standard & Poor’s downgrades America’s debt, the other two big credit-raters are likely to follow. The result: You’ll be paying higher interest on your variable-rate mortgage, your auto loan, your credit card loans, and every other penny you borrow. And many of the securities you own that you consider especially safe – Treasury bills and other highly-rated bonds – will be worth less.

In other words, Standard & Poor’s is threatening that if the ten-year budget deficit isn’t cut by $4 trillion in a credible and bipartisan way, you’ll pay more – even if the debt ceiling is lifted next week.”

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

Is The Jobs Report Almost Always Wrong?

We have written about how the government measures unemployment before – but the jobs report, the one that quotes the number of jobs gained or lost in a particular month, gets revised so many times later, that a lot of people are questioning if the report can ever be close to accurate. A Time article on this more or less summarizes the issue:

“Revisions are of course the norm with government reports, but most of those reports don’t get the attention that the jobs report gets. Worse, the size of the revision seem to matter more at times when the economy is weak. A difference of 50,000 jobs, which is well within what the government deems as an acceptable error, can really change the employment picture at a time when the economy is producing less than 100,000 jobs a month.”

Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/05/17/jobs-miscount-how-flawed-is-the-nations-most-watched-economic-indicator/#ixzz1Mfqf5bkl

Here is the real reason why these numbers are not dependable:

“Making matters worse, the monthly numbers we get on the jobs market come from not one, but two surveys. The number of jobs comes from something called the establishment survey, which is done by asking 140,000 businesses and 440,000 workplaces to fill out a form in the middle of the month detailing how their payrolls have changed. The government takes that data and makes an estimate of how many people are employed in the entire country. The unemployment number, which is also released on the first Friday of the month, comes from a survey of 60,000 households. Despite the smaller sample, the unemployment rate often gets more attention than the jobs tally. Worse, at times the two surveys can say opposite things, which is exactly what happened last month when the unemployment rate rose, but so did the number of people with a job. The differing data can leave economists scratching their heads.”

Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/05/17/jobs-miscount-how-flawed-is-the-nations-most-watched-economic-indicator/#ixzz1Mfr4G8Oq

Measurement is key. But wrong measurements, and misinterpretations on top of that can have dire consequences.

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

Why The Unemployment Rate Went Up

When the job numbers came out recently, hiring went up, but so did unemployment. How did this happen?

We have written about how the unemployment rate is measured.. The summary of the answer is below:

“Despite the warm and fuzzy reaction to the surprisingly good jobs number, there was another very important number that seemed to suggest the economy is far from healed: The unemployment rate. The jobless figure rose to 9.0% in April, from 8.8% the month before. And while some economists were expecting the number to jump even while the economic picked up, April’s jump was worse than expected. Here’s why:

Month after month economists have been expecting the unemployment rate to rise, even at the same time predicting the economy would improve. How is that? Well, the unemployment rate tracks the number of people who are looking for work, not the number of people who are out of work. If you are out of work and not looking, well then you are basically invisible to the government (that’s certainly a problem, but another story). So as the economy improves, more people get encouraged they will find a job and more people look for work. Presto: The unemployment rate jumps. Good sign, right?

It would be if that was what happened in April, which it was not. Actually, the number of people in the labor force not looking for a job actually rose. At the same time, the number of people who want a job and can’t get one rose by more than 200,000. So there is no easy way to explain away the unemployment rate, other than to say, at least by this measure, the jobs market was worse in April.”

Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/05/06/when-do-good-jobs-numbers-equal-a-good-economy/#ixzz1LeujLoz2

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

Measure Website Traffic Across Devices: comScore’s Total Universe Report

For many new services on the web, audience measurement is getting tougher since most of the usage is on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. comScore seems to have solved this problem with its latest solution.

[From comScore Press Release]

” comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced the beta release of the comScore Media Metrix Total Universe report, which provides audience measurement for 100 percent of a site’s traffic, including usage via mobile phones, apps, tablets and shared computers such as Internet cafes. This never-before-available report, which will be available to comScore Media Metrix subscribers, will be released with April data in the U.S. and U.K. (with other global markets being released in subsequent months) for all publishers currently leveraging the comScore Unified Digital Measurement™ (UDM) tag. The initial report features standard comScore Media Metrix key measures, such as unique visitors, reach, and page views, providing an unduplicated view of site audiences across multiple media platforms.”

Source: comScore

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

How the US Government Measures Unemployment

Did you know that the US Government measures unemployment using a survey, and not on number of persons claiming unemployment benefits?

“Because unemployment insurance records relate only to persons who have applied for such benefits, and since it is impractical to actually count every unemployed person each month, the Government conducts a monthly sample survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS) to measure the extent of unemployment in the country. The CPS has been conducted in the United States every month since 1940, when it began as a Work Projects Administration project. It has been expanded and modified several times since then. For instance, beginning in 1994, the CPS estimates reflect the results of a major redesign of the survey. (For more information on the CPS redesign, see Chapter 1, “Labor Force Data Derived from the Current Population Survey,” in the BLS Handbook of Methods.)

There are about 60,000 households in the sample for this survey. This translates into approximately 110,000 individuals, a large sample compared to public opinion surveys which usually cover fewer than 2,000 people. The CPS sample is selected so as to be representative of the entire population of the United States. In order to select the sample, all of the counties and county-equivalent cities in the country first are grouped into 2,025 geographic areas (sampling units). The Census Bureau then designs and selects a sample consisting of 824 of these geographic areas to represent each State and the District of Columbia. The sample is a State-based design and reflects urban and rural areas, different types of industrial and farming areas, and the major geographic divisions of each State. (For a detailed explanation of CPS sampling methodology, see Chapter 1, of the BLS Handbook of Methods.)”

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter