Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Anyone who is ever tempted to take National Review or Stan Liebowitz seriously on anything should look at this:

Making Sense of Jobs Nonsense (August 7, 2009): The headlines say “job losses decrease” and “unemployment falls.” But these are contradictory statements since any net job losses, even if the number is smaller than the month before, imply a decrease in employment.... [This] might mean that we are getting different readings from two different surveys that often give conflicting results.... Payroll says unemployment is increasing whereas the unemployment rate would seem to indicate the opposite. Most of the media trumpeted the payroll figures during the Bush years, concluding that the Bush presidency was failing to increase employment by very much. Since no serious observer actually believes that employment is now rising, the drop in the unemployment rate should be discounted by the media. It will be interesting to see if they are consistent or if they let their biases through and suggest that the employment picture is improving. Nevertheless, the numbers do indicate that employment is getting worse at a slower rate than before, which is an improvement of sorts.

Ummmm...

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Household Survey Employment:

June 2009: 140,196
July 2009: 140,041

Payroll Survey Nonfarm Employment:

June 2009: 131,735 July 2009: 131,488

There are no contradictory statements. There are no disagreements between the directions that surveys are pointing this month.