The Labor Department has a bureau that every month asks for 400,000 businesses in all kinds of fields from retail to manufacturing, to hotel services from all around the country how many people are on your payroll. That number is reported as the payroll survey on the first Friday of every month. That’s what we usually call the jobs number. In September, 114,000 payroll jobs were added, but there is another survey also done. This one from the Census Bureau, about 60,000 households are phoned every month and asked among other things, are you working? In September, a whopping 873,000 more people reported working than the month before. That’s a big number. And that household report pushed the unemployment rate down from 8.1% to 7.8%. That’s a strong jobs showing, good news for the White House. But some naysayers are wondering if it’s too good to be true. Jack Welch, General Electric’s former CEO tweeting this, quote, “Unbelievable jobs numbers. These Chicago guys will do anything, can’t debate, so change numbers.” And the group, Americans for Limited Government has suggested maybe someone tinkered with the numbers. 

 

“Very convenient timing for the president, if he’d mapped it out to be able to have it, this would be when you want to have it, you know, he is facing 43 straight months of 8% plus of unemployment, the longest time in the history since the Great Depression. 

 

The Labor Department and the Bureau of Labor Statistics scuff at any notion that someone manipulated the jobs report. 

 

It’s collected by about 2,000 interviewers who are all federal employees, career federal employees. And so, you’d have to imagine that the people who participate in the survey, and they do this voluntarily are for some reason trying to manipulate things. 

 

And it’s not unusual for the two surveys, one based on asking companies and the other based on asking individuals to have wide disparities. Why? The household number that shows a gain of 873,000 new workers includes all kinds of workers, including self-employed and certain agriculture workers. And it’s based on a much smaller sample than the survey of business. Keith Hall is a former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He says the numbers can vary widely. 

 

I understand people’s frustration and suspicion when the unemployment rate goes down, you know, right before an election. But in reality, the all the federal statistical agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics are independent agencies, they have a long tradition of being very professional and very non-political. 

 

To change the report, well, that would be a crime, and also, very difficult to do. Lisa Sylvester, CNN, Washington. 

 

All right now, based on your perspective, our next story is either 50 or possibly 200 million years in the making. A scientist says he’s discovered a new species of dinosaur. Actually, he came across it in a fossil that was discovered in South Africa back in the 1960s. But this is the first scientist to describe it. He is calling it Pegamastics Africanos. He says it lived around 200 million years ago, and this is what it might have looked like. The scientists compared it to a two-legged porcupine, saying it was covered with bristles about the size of a house cat, you could see those sharp teeth. The scientist says he thinks those teeth were for self-defense. He believes Pegamastics was a plant eater, not a meat eater.