“Monthly labour market surveys have been up as often as they have been down, throwing into question the accuracy of the numbers crunched at Statistics Canada.” You can say that again. The July estimates were in error, showing way too little employment growth, something which StatCan itself was forced to admit. The very next month showed an all-time record monthly growth in self-employment of 86.9 thousand jobs combined with an all-time record monthly decrease in private sector employment of 111.8 thousand jobs. Today’s data release for September shows an all-time record increase in both private sector (123.6 thousand) and total employment (129.6 thousand) and the worst decline in self-employment (55.6 thousand) ever except for April 2000, when there was a loss of 81.6 thousand jobs. Obviously the August estimates were unreliable. The record growth in paid employment and near-record decline in self-employment for September wouldn’t be there but for the improbable records set in August. StatCan paid no attention to any of these records, nor did it offer an explanation of them, as is its wont. The blog “What’s really behind the peculiar Canadian labour stats lately” on the economicjustice.ca website notes the paucity of information available on the LFS. StatCan refuses to publish LFS data quality measures. The imputation rate for employment status is not available month by month, although it was precisely errors in such imputation to which StatCan itself ascribed the faulty initial July estimate. Reporters like Mr Isfeld and his ilk should do a little more than show mild skepticism regarding the LFS estimates, and demand more transparency from StatCan.
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 01:45:54 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015