At
The Atlantic, Derek Thompson writes
The Government Is Horrible at Predictions (So Is Everybody Else):
"Obamacare's rollout will be great."
"Anthony Weiner will win."
"Life will be found on Mars."
These were among the worst predictions of 2013, Blake Hounshell decreed in Politico Magazine today. Predictions are hard, especially about the future, goes the saying. But predictions are also easy and, more importantly, they are free—both to the reader (they're effortless to read) and to the prognosticator (outside of meteorology, there is no cost to being a relentlessly bad forecaster in journalism). But it's not just the fourth estate that's biased toward future forecasting. Government can't get enough of it, either.
This week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published its own opus on the future, predicting the next ten years in jobs. As you see below, the fastest-growing occupations are projected in health care and construction.
Every decade, the BLS makes these predictions, and every decade, the BLS is wrong. And that's okay. In being wrong, the Bureau tells an important story about the economy—and about predictions, in general. Here's the BLS's 2002 prediction of last year's jobs (2002 predictions in BLUE) compared to what actually happened (2012 reality in RED), via Danny Vinik.
In a word: whoops.
What did BLS get right? At least two things: the unstoppable growth in health-care jobs (which it expects to continue) and the steady growth in leisure and hospitality.
What did it miss? Everything else, in particular (a) the boom in mining, led by the natural-gas revolution, (b) the utter collapse of the publishing industry, and (c) the Great Recession, which wiped out half-a-decade of economic growth. BLS thought we'd create 20 million non-farm jobs last decade. We created about six million. That's a 13-million-job gap. [...]
|
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—GOP hill staffer a thief:
Poor Republican staffer. He didn't realize that GOP theft of public assets (our lands, our health, our jobs, our freedoms, our lives) wasn't meant to be taken this literally:
The House Small Business Committee's chief economist was charged by Capitol Police with the attempted theft of a plasma television Thursday night.
According to a Capitol Police memorandum, officers apprehended the suspect, Thomas Loo, in the Rayburn House Office Building at approximately 10 p.m. Thursday after a Financial Services Committee staff member discovered Loo removing a plasma television from a room on the building's second floor.
|
Tweet of the Day:
If you hate the holidays because of the crass commercialism, I wonder what you think of the rest of the year.
— @NeinQuarterly
Every Monday through Friday you can catch the Kagro in the Morning Show 9 AM ET by dropping in
here, or you can download the
Stitcher app (found in the app stores or at Stitcher.com), and find a live stream there, by searching for "Netroots Radio."
High Impact Posts. The Week's High Impact Posts. Top Comments.