Dennis, good answer. You researched the issue to back your claim. I admire that.
This is from the BLS expansive website:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24093880/Bure ... e-Dec-2009"
Why does the establishment survey have revisions?The establishment survey revises published estimates to improve its data series by incorporating additional information that was not available at the time of the initial publication of the estimates. The establishment survey revises its initial monthly estimates twice, in the immediately succeeding 2 months, to incorporate additional sample receipts from respondents in the survey and recalculated seasonal adjustment factors."
In any case, the revised figures ARE the ones reported by the press. :
http://www.bls.gov/cps/seasfaq.htm"
As a general rule, the monthly employment and unemployment numbers reported in the news are seasonally adjusted data. Seasonally adjusted data are useful when comparing several months of data. Annual average estimates are calculated from the not seasonally adjusted data series."
In the first graph you posted, the greatest discrepancy was in 2009, where the green "prior" line was well above the revised figures. This is because at the end of 2009 the BLS revised the procedure to include long-term unemployed not previously counted. This reflected an economic reality previously ignored under the Bush administration, and was not a sinister plot to cook the books.
The othe r revisions you cite are on the scale of a fraction of a per cent, and insignificant in the context of the overall economic outlook. From the charts you provide, the inescapable conclusion is that the economy went into free-fall in 2008, the last year of the Bush administrations, revisions or no, and only started to recover a little in 2010, after Obama had been in office for a year. I'm not saying that US Presidents have the final word on economic trends, I'm saying that the unemployment is a critical indicator of the current situation, and if the rate of unemployment doubles in a two year span whether it's 100% more or 100.5% more is insignificant.
Reading thus thread, first you said that the media doesn't report the bad news regarding unemployment. When it was pointed out that it did, you back-pedaled and said but it wasn't the real, monthly, revised figures, (and you had the press "drooling" over a "rosy" picture – hyperbole when the facts aren't sensational enough, nice). In fact nobody in the press ever said the latest unemployment numbers were good. They were greater than expected and a huge disappointment to everyone, except, perhaps, for a few right-wing ideologues who rub their hands together and cackle with delight in any misfortune that befalls the country under the watch of the Obama administration. (Note my use of fanciful exaggeration to embellish the point. Two can play at that game.)
Now it appears that the figures are adjusted seasonally, not monthly, if I'm wrong please show me where the monthly revisions are published.
Look, if you are determined to believe in a diabolical conspiracy of a manipulative White House, a malleable, partisan Department of Labor, and a corrupt press corps to under-report unemployment statistics by one half of one percent, then I won't change your mind.