If you look at the data for nonfarm employment over time, even an occasional viewer can see the seasonal peaks and valleys, and one would think every economist would tell the jubilant feds, "Hey, wait a minute. . . ."
Let's quickly turn to real estate, because jobs and houses are codependent.
Just before Christmas, the National Association of Realtors acknowledged that outdated methodology had caused it to overestimate sales of previously owned homes for about four years.
Independent data-crunchers had long assumed that the numbers were too high, by 20 percent by one estimate. When the Realtors "rebenchmarked" (yes, I know), they were 14.3 percent too generous for 2007, 2008, and 2009, and 14.6 percent more than reality for 2010.
If you are someone who deals in half-empty glasses, that means the real estate downturn was even worse than we had imagined.
But the Realtors group's chief economist, Lawrence Yun, offered the half-full glass that saved the day.
"From a consumer's perspective, only the local market information matters, and there are no changes to local multiple-listing-service data or local supply-and-demand balance, or to local home prices," Yun said.
In response, I amused at least two of my followers by tweeting: "If all real estate is local, why do we need the NAR? Just asking."
The answer is that real estate agents and brokers need the association to push housing's agenda in Washington as much as builders need their national organizations. Politicians pay greater attention to groups with lots of members who dress nicely and finance political action committees than they do to anyone else.
Sales numbers are another matter. Real estate has been, is, and always will be local: from street to block to neighborhood to town and city, and even to region.
Is that saying that we don't have to report the national numbers? No. We'd be accused of suppressing the news.
