But wait, before you celebrate: the report also offered a preliminary estimate of the big revision coming: in the year ending March 2007, says the BLS, its numbers overstated job growth by 297,000. (The Wall Street Journal made a huge deal out of the previous revision, which raised estimates of job creation; wanna bet that they don’t say much about this one?) So the recent past is not what it used to be.
There are suspicions that the revisions will be even bigger when they get around to the current period. One telltale sign: if you believe the BLS numbers, employment in residential home construction is down only 3.6% over the past year – and it’s still higher than its average level in 2005, the peak of the housing boom. This despite the fact that housing is in a very deep slump.
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