Not Convinced About "The Economy?"

Despite the Bushbot yappings and mewlings, some folks remain un-convinced that Everything's Coming Up Roses.

And as usual, FedStats are questioned. Here, the "employment" numbers from BLS, which actually issues ANOTHER report which damages the creds of the better-known "employment" report:

But that [the discrepancy between reported and real] can be huge is evident in another report issued last week by that same Bureau of Labor Statistics (which might better be called the Bureau of Labored Statistics). It's called Business Employment Dynamics,

...this series reports detailed gross job gains and losses in the private sector based on nearly complete coverage "of the employment universe provided by the unemployment insurance system."

...Thus, compared with a gain for the quarter of 442,000 jobs reported in the so-called establishment survey, the Business Employment Dynamics, or BED, reckoning was a scant 19,000 additions. In manufacturing, the 9,000 jobs lost according to the payroll figures balloon into a loss of 95,000 jobs in the BED data; the improbable 20,000 additions in construction (think: housing) turns into a loss of 77,000 by BED's measure; the 507,000 gain in private services shrinks to 108,00. And so it goes.

---Alan Abelson, quoted in The Big Picture