Article Review 6: Newsflash from the December ‘Jobs’ Report-The US Economy Is Dead in the Water

This week’s article is by David Stockman, titled “Newsflash from the December ‘Jobs’ Report-The US Economy Is Dead in the Water.” It explains how the Bureau of Labor Statistics is purposely giving out skewed information in order to make the economy seem like it’s in a better state than it really is. One way they are doing this is by overstating the number of jobs there are in the U.S. Their reason for the numbers they’ve made is seasonal adjustment. Basically the Bureau of Labor Statistics are making up their own numbers instead of using the actual statistics. Stockman predicts that all of these created lies will ultimately lead to a crash in the stock market.

From the very beginning of the article, I already recognize two terms that we’ve learned during class. We learned about the BLS and seasonal adjustments. BLS stands for the Bureau of Labor Statistics who calculates consumer price index. Seasonal adjustments are a statistical method to remove seasonal components in order to better analyze a trend. Thus, this article addressed things from the current and last chapter that we have learned. It included the tasks of the BLS as well as the stock market.