Straight Dope Message Board

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Ramira

It is not a more honest statistic, it is a different statistic
No, not in any way.

It is making the mistaken assumptoin that all who are not in the workforce are interested in a paid position - which is far from the truth for many reasons - such as women who do not desire to be in the labor force, and confuses other categories of non work for the demand for work.

The seeking employment statistic is a key statistic for having an estimation of the pressure in the labor market, the active supply versus the active demand.

That is the economics.

Other issues are part of certain left political disputes relative to policy, which may be correctly based or not, but are a different question from the economic demande question.

Honest discussion of workforce participation try to remove people like me, retired and not interested in finding work, to find discouraged workers who don't show up in the regular unemployment figures but who still are a problem.
The bad odor in the US comes from certain politicians who use workforce participation when out of office to claim that there is a major unemployment problem and then use regular unemployment when in office to show how much better they've made things.
Is there an official breakdown of the participation numbers beyond actively looking for work and not? I've never seen one quoted, and I'd think it would be hard to determine.

[kaylasdad99]

Originally Posted by Dewey Finn

FYI, here's an example of fabricated statistics from a government official.

Okay, while I can appreciate your reluctance to link to the America-hating fuckstick's Twitter feed, I would even MORE appreciate a cite to establish that your quote actually came from him (don't take if personally. Smapti has demonstrated that his tweeting voice is reproducible).

[Ace309]

Originally Posted by Voyager

Is there an official breakdown of the participation numbers beyond actively looking for work and not? I've never seen one quoted, and I'd think it would be hard to determine.

You might find the U4 and U5 statistics useful.

[Banksiaman]

This unfolding story about Indian Prime Minister Modhi attempting to suppress statistics that make him look less than totally brilliant and effective is a useful illustration of the competing intention of politicians and number-crunchers, and also the imperfect ability of the former to interfere with the latter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/w...ment-rate.html

[slash2k]

Originally Posted by kaylasdad99

Okay, while I can appreciate your reluctance to link to the America-hating fuckstick's Twitter feed, I would even MORE appreciate a cite to establish that your quote actually came from him (don't take if personally. Smapti has demonstrated that his tweeting voice is reproducible).

Ask and ye shall receive: Trump's twitter feed, Jan. 27

[Pantastic]

Generally numbers from the natural sciences are very accurate. However, I absolutely don't trust things like labor statistics, as they are often very politically driven. They generally won't report an incorrect wrong number (unemployment at 6% when their numbers say 8%), but will gladly collect data in a way that produces a result that is not accurate and fits a political agenda.

For example, numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were used to 'prove' that a claim that lots of people are having to work long hours and/or multiple jobs to make ends meet was false. The BLS says with a straight face that only a tiny fraction of people work two jobs, and that the average hours per week worked is 34.5. But if you delve into the BLS's reports, you see that when they collect data on people working two jobs, they only collect data on people working two 'formal payroll' jobs. Anyone who works a regular job and drives an uber on the side, or who works a regular job and works in a call center that classes everyone as 1099s, or who operates their own business on the side counts as having only a single job for them. Similarly, survey generating the number of hours worked per week excludes these people, and also treats anyone who is salaried as working only 40 hours per week! So the McDonalds manager who gets 'promoted' so they don't have to pay him overtime and routinely covers shifts for missing employees never counts for more than 40, nor does the IT worker in a 'burnout culutre' job who's expected to work at least 60 hours per week.

While I'm sure the number they report accurately reflects the numbers they collected, what they count for collection doesn't match what they call the numbers they report. I would be interested in actual numbers on how many Americans work multiple jobs and how many hours per week Americans typically work, but the BLS numbers that claim to be that simply aren't.

[Nava]

Originally Posted by Pantastic

Generally numbers from the natural sciences are very accurate.

That depends on which ones, and on your definition of "accurate". Calorimetric values have errors in the 5-10% range; calculations based on them or trying to obtain them are considered perfectly fine if they are within those ranges.

OTOH, we routinely expect any professional scale weighing things which aren't alive and moving to produce values that are exact to the 4th or 6th figure, or even beyond (depending on the scale, the material and the environment).

And something like pH would fall in between: it's not as horribly inaccurate as calorimetric values, but anybody giving pH with two decimals should be conscious that the second one is wobbly, and anybody giving it with more needs to go back to school.

[Ramira]

Originally Posted by Pantastic

However, I absolutely don't trust things like labor statistics, as they are often very politically driven.

the criticisms of these numbers are usually more politically driven also by the ignorance of the practical limitations of the continuous statistical data collection and the types of data collection standardizations that are needed to ensure the continuity of the time series data and the comparability - a very different operation from the single point in time studies or the single point of fixed physical reality data generation used in a physical science like the chemistry etc.

will gladly collect data in a way that produces a result that is not accurate and fits a political agenda.

your following examples suggest in fact it is the political point of view generating the complaint.

For example, numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics were used to 'prove' that a claim that lots of people are having to work long hours and/or multiple jobs to make ends meet was false.

this is an observation on a usage of a data and not the data.

Similarly, survey generating the number of hours worked per week excludes these people, and also treats anyone who is salaried as working only 40 hours per week!

Here an example - taking as assumption it is an accurate rendition of the American statistic, that reflects the trade offs of the budgets and the reality of obtaining the regular and the consistent survey data responses from the representative samples.

Simplifications and standardizations based on simplifications are necessary frequently to ensure reasonable and consistent response rates within the reasonable limit of the budgets available.

It is also the case the statistical collection (although maybe not the USA with its habit of self centrism) attempts to be standardized with international standards which also have to be made to attempt to ensure the cross comparison

So the McDonalds manager who gets 'promoted' so they don't have to pay him overtime and routinely covers shifts for missing employees never counts for more than 40, nor does the IT worker in a 'burnout culutre' job who's expected to work at least 60 hours per week.

these are questions that are not ones that such data is made to answer.

It is like criticising the hammer for not being the screwdriver.

Typically from both the Left and the Right there is always the criticisisms and the unhappiness if the statistics in question do not have the detail and the orietnation that their current obsessions desire, but this is the problem with the tension between the standardization and the long-term value of the comparability with the evolution of both the political and the policy concerns.

[Wendell Wagner]

And the accuracy of numbers in the natural sciences can change over time. When the Big Bang first was generally accepted, how long ago it happened was given as 15 billion years, give or take 5 billion years. Now it's 13.799 billion, give or take 21 million years.

[DrDeth]

Originally Posted by echoreply

... Which is more believable, a 200 page report on the findings of a multi-year study on cancer treatment from the NCI, or a tweet from a Congressional Representative?

.

Certainly Politicians do make stats up. Just a brief perusal of Politifact will confirm that.

And I suppose some harried bureaucrat has made up a number he didnt have on hand when pressed.

But you see- bureaucrats have little reason to lie. Their jobs are protected. And of course once they leave, they can simply post tell all blogs or run to a newspaper.

If the conspiracy is limited to a handful of people, maybe. But once it spreads- someone is gonna spill the beans, let the cat out of the bag and so forth.

[DrDeth]

Originally Posted by dropzone

Given the broad range of CTs associated with the CDC (vaccination and gunshot deaths), NASA (global warming, lunar landings, UFOs), and the NOAA (just global warming?) I suspect some friend of the OP is assembling a Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory. I got pretty far along with my own, ten or fifteen years back, but I got distra--Ooh! Shiny!

Well, it is true that the original CDC "guns are dangerous to those that own them" study was biased, had the conclusion before the data, and was based upon a system that had never before been used for such data and was doubtful in it's application. But that study has been debunked many times, and Congress stepped in also.

[DrDeth]

Originally Posted by kaylasdad99

Okay, while I can appreciate your reluctance to link to the America-hating fuckstick's Twitter feed, I would even MORE appreciate a cite to establish that your quote actually came from him (don't take if personally. ...

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...t-illegal-imm/
"We are not even into February and the cost of illegal immigration so far this year is $18,959,495,168. Cost Friday was $603,331,392. There are at least 25,772,342 illegal aliens, not the 11,000,000 that have been reported for years, in our Country."
— Donald Trump on Sunday, January 27th, 2019 in a tweet

.....

Without evidence from Trump or his administration to back this statement, we rate it False.

[Pantastic]

Originally Posted by Ramira

It is like criticising the hammer for not being the screwdriver.

No, it's like criticizing a statistic that says it shows the average number of hours worked for not showing the average number of hours worked, and instead deliberately and grossly undercounting the number of hours worked.

[scarface54345]

Originally Posted by silenus

What "conspiracy" does the OP want us to help prove? That would narrow things down a lot.

Well I heard that NASA has doctored some temperatures to make it seem like our global warming/climate change problem is worse than it really is though I don't know if that is true.

[Johnny L.A.]

Originally Posted by scarface54345

Well I heard that NASA has doctored some temperatures to make it seem like our global warming/climate change problem is worse than it really is though I don't know if that is true.

Heard from whom? What is the source of the claim?

[dorvann]

Originally Posted by Banksiaman

Well, when seasonally adjusted, they both give you 110% which coincidentally, as you would be aware, is the standard metric of measurement for sportsperson effort per event, divided by the number you first though of.

We really need to get pro wrestler's Scott Steiner opinion on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msDuNZyYAIQ

[Czarcasm]

Originally Posted by scarface54345

Well I heard that NASA has doctored some temperatures to make it seem like our global warming/climate change problem is worse than it really is though I don't know if that is true.

How do you determine which unfounded rumors to spread, and which to keep to yourself and/or ignore?