Ya know...it's a crying shame there's nobody with the ballz to tell you you're soooo wrong, Mikie!
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/05/more-census-nonsense/We’re also being asked about claims reported by New York Post columnist John Crudele, who wrote that Census was engaging in "some statistical tricks" to inflate the number of workers that it reports to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Crudele based his claim on reports from three Census workers, two of whom were not named.
But Census denies that what Crudele described is actually happening. And we can report that even if it is happening, it would not have any effect on jobs figures reported by the BLS. Crudele misunderstands — or at least, did not report accurately — the way jobs figures are gathered.
The sources he quoted claimed that they had been hired, fired and re-hired a number of times. Each time, Crudele claimed, "Census was able to report the creation of a new job to the Labor Department." But that’s not true.
For one thing, Census officials flatly deny that any such hiring and re-hiring is going on. In May 25 letters to the heads of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, Census Director Robert M. Groves called the Post article a "distortion." He stated:
Census Director Groves, May 25: [W]e do not hire, then fire, and then rehire anyone. Any employee who is fired is fired for cause.
Groves said temporary workers go on "inactive" status when work is complete, and might be reactivated if more work comes up. But, "[a]t no time do we count a reactivation from non-working status as a ‘rehire.’ "
More to the point, the jobs figures that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports each month are not based on any count of "new jobs" or new hires. Rather, the BLS gets payroll figures on how many persons are actually being paid at the time of its monthly survey. What reporters and economists commonly refer to as job growth or job losses reflect the net change from month to month, not any tally of those hired or fired (or retired or deceased, for that matter). Anyone who had been hired, fired and re-hired would still be reported just once, no matter how many times they may have been on or off the payroll before the reporting period.
For a full explanation of how jobs figures (technically, "total nonfarm employment") are gathered, see the "Frequently Asked Questions" page that BLS has provided to explain its National Current Employment Survey.
