Unemployment increased to 9.6% at the end of December — up from 9.3% in mid-December and 8.8% at the end of November. Underemployment rose to 19.0% in December from 17.2% at the end of November.

by Dennis Jacobe, Chief Economist – Gallup

Copyright © 2011 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.

Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking Nov. 30-Dec. 29, 2010, with a random sample of 18,071 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, selected using random-digit-dial sampling.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point..

From Monty Pelerin’s World:

Gallup Report on Employment

Much like Claude Rains, I am “shocked, shocked” that anyone would suggest that the government manipulates data to its advantage. Zerohedge is not shocked.

They have an interesting post on the new Gallup Results which indicate that employment is not improving:

Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 9.6% at the end of December — up from 9.3% in mid-December and 8.8% at the end of November.

According to Gallup:

“Whatever the government reports about unemployment on Friday, Gallup’s U.S. underemployment data for the end of 2010 show that nearly one in five Americans continue to be unemployed or employed part-time looking for full-time work. In turn, this underscores the importance of job creation as a top national priority.”

Zerohedge believes that Gallup has come as close as it dare to calling government job numbers fictitious and manipulated:

And here is the kicker: as Gallup can not openly accuse the government of manipulating data, it has to apologize on behalf of the BLS of having seasonally adjusted data which skews it (unlike Zero Hedge which openly surmised that the November NFP number was a disaster only to encourage the passage of the latest stimulus, with us also suggesting that the December number will be stellar merely confirming that the stimulus is doing miracles to the “economy”). In other words, the biggest beneficial fudge factor that the government continues to rely on: the various seasonal adjustment (not to mention the birth death model), may well push some imaginary number not grounded in anything close to reality well into the 7 digit range, and result in the S&P jump by a double digit percentage. And as the BLS is wont do to, it will eventually revise the number to something closer to reality, but by then the market will have long forgotten about the most recent manipulation. Bottom line: all in a day’s work for the department of truth.

Because the Gallup unemployment measure is not seasonally adjusted, it tends to more accurately reflect what is actually taking place in the U.S. job market — and may not agree with the government’s estimate that is seasonally adjusted. Further, Gallup’s data tend to be more up-to-date than the government’s because Gallup polls on the unemployment situation continuously. Combined, seasonal adjustments and timing differences likely explain much of the disparity between Gallup’s measures of underemployment and unemployment, compared with those reported by others.

Gallup’s politically correct conclusion is spot on: no matter the spin, the illusion, or the data manipulation

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