The Gallup Organization had some bad news for Barack Obama on Friday. Its not that Obama fell behind Mitt Romney by two points in Gallups daily tracking poll, although that couldnt have helped the the O-Teams spirits heading into the weekend. Between now and the election, polls are likely to be less stable than Joe Bidens thought process.
The really bad news for the Chicago mob is that Gallups unemployment survey shows the Obama economy is getting even worse. Gallup reported an uptick in joblessness in their latest survey of 30,000 households.
“This suggests that the governments unadjusted unemployment rate could increase to 8.7% … The governments measurement of the unadjusted unemployment rate has been known to differ with Gallups findings, but a drop of 0.3% … is necessary to bring the governments unadjusted rate down to Gallup levels.”
However, the figure that is most commonly used in reporting joblessness is the Bureau of Labor Statisticss BLSs seasonally adjusted rate. Of that rate, Gallup notes:
“More interestingly, there were no BLS seasonal adjustments in August 2011. If this remains the same in 2012, the Gallup seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for August would be 8.3% while that of the BLS would be 8.7%, assuming a similar increase to that shown in the Gallup data.”
That would represent a .4% increase over last months numbers and would raise the official government jobless rate dangerously close to 9%.
Gallup adds:
“Further, Gallups data show the labor force participation rate to be increasing in August. In turn, that could have an additional negative impact on the unemployment rate for August if the governments data show a similar pattern.”
Gallup hints that only something like manipulation of data will prevent the BLS from reporting a substantial increase in unemployment.
“Regardless, barring heroic adjustments or a sharp change in direction, Gallup data suggest the seasonally adjusted U.S. unemployment rate for August will increase – possibly substantially — when announced in early September.” (emphasis added)
As previously noted, Gallup pointed out that last years August data was not adjusted. It will be interesting to see if the BLS decides to adjust their data this year.
via Articles: Potentially Devastating News on the Obama Economy.
