Census Padding Jobs Numbers

We already knew that the job numbers for the summer would be skewed to show an over-optimistic look a the jobs picture. Why? Because of the Census. The government has hired A LOT of workers to conduct the census... all of which are temporary. So if you're looking at the job numbers hoping they're the start of a permanent trend, think again.

But now we find out that the the Census Bureau is padding those numbers to make the job picture look better. How? By hiring, firing, and re-hiring the same people over and over again.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/two_more_census_workers_blow_the_OqY80N3DBTvL17VmxKKR0O

Last week, one of the millions of workers hired by Census 2010 to parade around the country counting Americans blew the whistle on some statistical tricks.

The worker, Naomi Cohn, told The Post that she was hired and fired a number of times by Census. Each time she was hired back, it seems, Census was able to report the creation of a new job to the Labor Department.

So one worker could be counted several times because of the way the Census is operating. And just how good are those jobs? No telling, but they may last as little as one hour a month.

Each month Census gives Labor a figure on the number of workers it has hired. That figure goes into the closely followed monthly employment report Labor provides. For the past two months the hiring by Census has made up a good portion of the new jobs.

Labor doesn't check the Census hiring figure or whether the jobs are actually new or recycled. It considers a new job to have been created if someone is hired to work at least one hour a month.

So the "jobs exaggeration" problem is even greater than we had anticipated.

Lovely. Just lovely.