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June 7th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Former Commonwealth Treasury official Peter Martin says employment figures, like sausages, are nice and juicy – until you discover how they’re actually made.
Martin, Fairfax’s economics correspondent, says the figures aren’t actually true.
They’re a good guess.
He’s still a big fan of employment numbers. He’s missed only one release of them, and that was to attend the birth of his daughter 21 years ago.
He says the figures tell a neat story. Too neat.
During the global financial crisis employment remained strong which was a tremendous achievement and testament to the economic stimulus package and employers keeping workers on, even though some employees’ hours were reduced.
Throughout 2010 there was a huge return to high employment numbers, but all throughout 2011 there was no growth at all.
‘‘The numbers have been virtually steady in more recent times and are starting to take off.
‘‘Now that’s odd. In the last few months it is starting to take off in the figures, which also looks odd,’’ says Martin.
A more accurate picture comes from looking at the unemployment growth, which shot up during the global financial crisis.
‘‘You didn’t see unemployment diving in 2010 as you would expect from all those extra jobs,’’ Martin says, pointing to his graphs.
‘‘You don’t see the unemployment climbing in 2011 as you would expect with no employment growth.’’
Speaking at the launch of Hays 2012 salary guide this morning in Canberra, Martin warned his audience as they tucked into a cooked breakfast that the truth about sausages and statistics wasn’t pretty.
‘‘Now, you know the saying about sausages and no one who cares about them should see how they are made.
‘‘Well the unemployment figures and employment figures – sorry you can’t have sausages again – it’s almost not the kind of thing you want to inquire into, right?’’
The Australian Bureau of Statistics calculated the figures by door-to-door surveys, then subsequent phone calls to ask whether any one had worked in the last fortnight or had looked for work in the last fortnight.
‘‘So for the unemployment rate, you take the number of people who are working, the number of people who said they were looking for work, add the two together and then take the number of people who said they were looking for work as a proportion of that and these days it is usually five per cent.
‘‘That is completely legitimate.’’
It is the other figures that are not legitimate.
‘‘To calculate employment you have to do something else and see how those 30,000 people would act as representatives of 22 million people. You have to scale them up.’’
But aside from a census every five years the ABS has to guess about the impact of sudden fluctuations.
Population numbers can vary wildly because of unforeseen events, like the muggings of Indian students and scale back of importing students which cause a sudden drop in the population.
In 2011 our population started picking up as rules about education changed, but the ABS didn’t know about the gains.
Martin says it realises there’s been a change it does not make a correction, but changes its guess at future calculations.
He says over 2010 and 2011 figures could have been out by about 80,000 because of the delay in recording actual fluctuations.
While ‘‘slagging the ABS ‘‘ numbers, Martin also admits he consumes them regularly to compile his stories.
Jobs growth figures in each state tell a clearer picture of the tremendous jobs and wages growth in the mining states.
The figures also show that people in the eastern states are reluctant to move across the Nullabor Plain, even though jobless rates are higher in their home state, and wages are lower.
For every vacancy in Tasmania there are nearly 11 people competing for it, whereas in Western Australia for every vacancy only 1.8 people are competing for it.
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