Article Review #6

In this article, David Stockman believes that the job growth of the United States is overestimated. He cites that the Bureau of Labor and Statistics added way too many jobs in order to make their seasonal adjustment then they should have. With a warmer winter, and the decline in in-store shopping due to companies like Amazon, Stockman believes the seasonal adjustment should have been much less. With only 11,000 jobs created in the month of December compared to 140,000 jobs in December 1999 and 212,000 jobs in December 2007, David Stockman believes that the United States economy is close another recession. Illustrating this view, David Stockman states, “In short, the December jobs report was not evidence of a ‘strong’ economy. It was just another emission from the government’s SA noise factory that obscures the actual state of the main street economy.” The primary reason behind the lack of job growth and the overestimated job growth is because, in the construction industry, no jobs are being created and the seasonal adjustment contains large increases in this sector.