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<p style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px;"><img class="caption" src="images/stories/limbaugh.jpg" border="0" alt="Rush Limbaugh" title="Rush Limbaugh" hspace="7" align="left" />Don’t ask me about seasonal adjustment. I’ve been trying to figure this out all morning, and I can’t. But the raw numbers, 130 million jobs in December, 128 million jobs in January, give or take a couple hundred thousand either side. But when the seasonal adjustments take place, there is a gain of 200, whatever they’re reporting, 33,000 jobs. Now, what’s happening is the labor force is shrinking. There are fewer jobs. Even the Drive-Bys, so excited, they can’t wait to report the good news, but even they are reporting that the labor force participation rate, number of jobs out there, is continuing to dwindle, and most of the jobs being created are low wage.</p>
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<p style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px;">But none of that’s gonna matter. None of it’s gonna matter. I don’t want to be an “I told you so,” but way back last year, even recently toward the end of last year, this being an election year, I predicted. But you knew. You knew what was gonna happen when this year started. You knew that the statistics are that no president has ever been reelected when the unemployment rate’s over 8%. So guess what it’s gonna be by the time we get to Election Day? It’s just that simple.</p>
<p style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px;">I’m trying to get to the bottom of this, this seasonal adjustment business. Stick with me on this, folks. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics: “What is seasonal adjustment? Seasonal adjustment is a statistical technique that attempts to measure and remove the influences of predictable seasonal patterns to reveal how employment and unemployment change from month to month. Over the course of a year, the size of the labor force, the levels of employment and unemployment, and other measures of labor market activity undergo fluctuations due to seasonal events including changes in weather, harvests, major holidays, and school schedules. Because these seasonal events follow a more or less regular pattern each year, their influence on statistical trends can be eliminated by seasonally adjusting the statistics from month to month.”</p>
<p style="background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 24px; vertical-align: baseline; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://conservativebyte.com/2012/02/explaining-obamas-fake-job-numbers/">Read more at ConservativeByte.com &gt;&gt;&gt;</a></p>
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