Who is Manipulating the Economic Data for Hillary?
There is a cornucopia of data that is released during the course of a month. The most anticipated report is the jobs report (Employment Situation) and the employment data. The second most anticipated report, until this Summer, was the Weekly Unemployment Claims Data. Other data that are seen as indicators of the economy include the Monthly Existing Home Sales data, the monthly New Home Construction Data, the Monthly New Home Sales data, the Consumer Price Index CPI) report, and the Monthly and Annual Retail Trade Survey (MARTS) data. One report that gets some attention is the Monthly Treasury Report on revenue and Spending. Other than the Treasury report, all the data that is analyzed on this website and in these articles, "all the data" has a seasonally adjusted (SA) component and a non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) component.
The data that is reported is the Seasonally Adjusted Data. The data that is recorded is the non-seasonally adjusted data. The seasonal factors used to convert the NSA data to the SA data change by week to week for weekly data, and month to month for monthly data. The seasonal factors also change season by season and year to year. The seasonal factors also change by category of data.When seasonal data is compared with seasonal data from different seasons and different years FACTs (False Assertions Considered to be True) are created.
FACT #1: President Obama has added 17 million jobs to the economy. This is a False Assertion for at least two reasons. President Obama had to lose five million jobs to add seventeen million jobs during his first 90 months in office. It is also false because We had to lose 15 million full-time jobs during the recession so we could recover those jobs and it took until August of 2015 to recover all of the lost full-time jobs lost during the recession. We saw full-time jobs lost again through April of 2016. It was finally during May 2016that all of the full-time jobs lost during the recession were "re-regained."
FACT #2: President Obama has the longest Streak of Consecutive MOnths of Seasonally Adjusted Private Sector Job Creation. The President's Private Sector Streak did not begin when they said it did. The President's streak ended during May of this year when the revisions were released with the June Employment Situation Report. It is important to note that President Bush had a streak of 53 months until one data point was revised. Note that the Seasonally Adjusted Private sector job number dropped from 121.797 million to 121.791 million after the preliminary adjustment was made - a drop of only 6000 jobs - a drop nonetheless.
FACT #3: President Obama has the longest streak ever of First-time Unemployment Claims under 300,000 claims a week, Seasonally Adjusted. This data has been challenged in this column for months. Please read "The Under 300,000 seasonally Adjusted First-time Unemployment Claim Streak (Part 1) It Didn't Start When they Said it Did."There are also three more columns in the series. Part 2 shows that the streak did not begin during June 2015. Part 3 shows that it did not start during September of 2015. Part 4 reveals that the current streak began during January of 2016. It is amazing what a big difference a small change in the seasonal factors makes.
FACT #4 Inflation is within the Parameters that the Treasury Wants to See. What was missed during 2015 what that we had ten consecutive months of deflation - when using the Clerical and Urban Wage Earner index of CPI. We have seen regular reports this year that we are seeing shelter inflation and medical inflation in the face of energy deflation, including this past month. We had only seen a streak like that during the Great Recession.
FACT #5 We are seeing Strength in the Retail Sector. We have seen weakness in the retail sector this year. The July MARTS data revealed that there were six sectors with same month year over year declines in retail sales. We have also seen weakness in the electronic and appliance retail sales sector for months. There are multiple sectors that have not returned to pre-recession levels of sales.This has to be seen as weakness in the retail industries
FACT #6 We are Seeing a Gasoline Stimulus. This is a half-truth. We are saving money at the pump. The savings are not acting as a gasoline stimulus. The money is either going to the government, as is detailed in the linked column in the preceding sentence, or it is going to shelter costs, as is mentioned in the preceding paragraph. If we are sending our savings to the government then it cannot be spent in other sectors.
FACT #7: President Obama has cut the Deficits in Half.This is a half truth, too.. He had to double the deficits in order to cut them in half. We saw trillion dollar deficits while we were spending $85 billion dollars a month on Quantitative Easing (QE.) The deficits experienced under President Obama were almost entirely created by QE.President Obama had a National Debt of just over $10 trillion when he took office. The most recent Treasury report shows that he has ballooned that debt to $19.4 Trillion. Senator Obama called President Bush's addition of $4 trillion to the debt "unpatriotic" and "irresponsible." Is President Obama doubly unpatriotic and doubly irresponsible?
FACT #8: The Housing Market is doing great. We have seen improvement for the past six years. Another half truth. More seasonal adjustments. If all you did was look at the data from April and Julythis year for existing home sales you would know that we are seeing weakness in the housing sector. The same could be true for the new construction industry. The housing industry is no longer failing and flailing. The housing sector might be receiving a passing grade.
FACT #9: We are Approaching Full-Employment. Full-employment is considered to be when the unemployment rate drops below 5%. This column has addressed the "Effective Unemployment Rate." which incorporates the changes in participation. If the participation rate remained constant then 5% unemployment would be 5% unemployment. We have an unadjusted unemployment rate of 5.14% and a participation rate of 63.36%. We had an unemployment rate of 6.04% and a participation rate of 66.83% during theninetieth month of President George W. Bush's time in office. This does not mean that we have a "real" unemployment rate 3.5% higher. The changes in population mean that we have 8.8 million missing participants and an unemployment rate in excess of 10%. That is not full-employment.
We have seen the Democrats generate Pre-Thanksgiving and Pre-Christmas talking points for your Crazy Republic Uncle. There first attempt was during December of 2014. I produce a column "Conservative Talking Points for Crazy Aunt Debbie This New Year's Eve" in response to that attempt. I produced a column last Christmas titled "Talking Turkey with You Liberal Relatives - If You Must" after they published their second "FACT" report.
I am sure that the Democrats will try and tell us that we are doing better than we were doing eight years ago - We aren't. We are doing better than we were doing during January of 2010. That really isn't hard to do.
It could be argued that the data is being messaged because it is easier to revise the data than it is to revise the narrative. It could be argued that the data is being adjusted aggressively to preserve the illusion of the "success" of Obamanomics. It could be argued that the recent data has been interpreted in such a way as to make it look like the economy would be best if we continued to see a Democrat in the White House. We know that during the run up to the 2012 election that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was caught fudging the data, Forbes ran a column on this issue as did the New York Post. Someone, or some people, are managing the message. Someone or some people is manipulating the economic data. It is up to us to make government live in the non-seasonally adjusted world. It is time for government to live in reality.
The data may not be being manipulated just to get Hillary Clinton Elected President. Then again, maybe they are.