Leftovers: Obama Administration Still Cooking the Books on Joblessness Data

(Thomas Mitchell/4TH ST8) By Jove, they’ve done it again, Magoo.

While stumbling around blind the Labor Department has found a way to report that new jobless claims fell by 1,000. Today’s press release reports initial claims this past week were 367,000, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week’s “revised” figure of 368,000.

Last week the agency told us new claims were 365,000. So during the past week they revised that number up 3,000 to 368,000 so this week they could say the new claims fell by 1,000 instead of increased by 2,000.

Remember that Washington Times editorial I mentioned this past week? It explained how the Labor Department is cooking the books:

“The Obama administration is managing perceptions by revising the weekly numbers upward after the fact. Every week for at least the last eight weeks, the initial jobless number has been raised after it was released, sometimes significantly. So while the combined initial figures over that period show a 13,000 new jobless decline, this is only because 49,000 jobless were not included in the initial reports.”

Make that nine weeks.

But don’t tell the folks at the Los Angeles Times. They’ve not figured out the trick.

The paper reports this morning:

“WASHINGTON — The labor market is looking a little better than last week’s disappointing jobs report for April.

“The government said Thursday that new claims for unemployment benefits edged lower last week to a seasonally adjusted 367,000 — down 1,000 from the prior week. That’s a second straight week of declining claims, suggesting that the abrupt and worrisome increase in jobless filings in the first three weeks of April was an aberration.”

Good news for Obama right?

By the way, the numbers that all the news media are reporting are the “seasonally adjusted number.” Scroll down to the unadjusted figures and we learn that actual initial claims, unadjusted, totaled 338,418, an increase of 4,942 from the previous week.

Not so good news for Obama. But don’t expect to read that in the news media.