FAST AND LOOSE WITH STATS

Statistics are funny things. You can more or less use them to prove what you want to prove.

Example: I can prove that cancer is caused by oxygen. In a study by me I found that 100% of those deprived of oxygen for more than 20 minutes did not die of cancer.

The cure for cancer is simple, too.

Simply place a plastic bag over the patient's head, tie it securely around his neck and he will not die of cancer.

That's the kind of magic the administration of President BO (the child president) uses to prove what it wants you to believe.

The latest "statistics" show unemployment at 8.3%.

PROGRESS!

Well, not really.

A much larger number of people last month simply quit looking for jobs than the month before, therefore the base on which the statistics were based shrank. Those people were simply thrown out of the data.

In his SOU speech, President BO (the child president) said, "We are starting to see some signs that the economy is picking up. We’ve created 22 million jobs over the last — er, three million jobs over the last 22 months."



Turns out, we  haven’t created 3 million net jobs over the last 22 months.

Writing for Hot Air, Ed Morrissey observed:

Twenty-two months ago, employment was at 129,438,000, according to the BLS, and in December (the last month for which we have data until about 8:30 am today), the number stood at 131,900,000. The difference between the two is 2.462 million, not 3 million, and it won’t be unless we created 538,000 net jobs in January … which seems unlikely.



But why 22 months? Obama began his term in January 2009, and the recession ended in June 2009. What’s so special about March 2010? Well, not so surprisingly, that’s almost the nadir of employment during Obama’s presidency, which actually took place in February 2010, two years ago this month. Even if he’d picked the right month, it would still only have been 2.654 million, not 3 million.


Calculating from the end of the recession, the net job creation from those 31 months is only 1.407 million, a wan 45,390 net jobs a month, far below the pace needed to keep up with population growth. Calculating for the entirety of his presidency, we’re actually in the hole 937,000 jobs. Obama tried to cherry-pick the worst month in order to claim the most credit he could possible for job growth, and managed to get both the month and the math wrong anyway.

The point is, this administration plays fast and loose with statistics, bending and twisting them in a way that would make those little tube guys in front of stores envious.

Your president is either ignorant of the proper use of statistics or he is deliberately misusing them to mislead you into thinking things are improving in the economy more than they are. It has to be one or the other, as there are no other options.