Channel 4 likes to give fact-checks on their blog for claims made by politicians. Their most recent one concerns the total number in employment in the UK.
David Cameron said
“There are more people in work today than there were at the time of the last election”
Channel 4 claim that since the election total employment has fallen from 29,145,000 to 29,119,000. They base their claim on official government employment statistics from this ONS website.
Well, looking at the data I can see these numbers:
May-Jul 2010 total employment 29,145,000This is a net loss of 26,000 jobs.
Sep-Nov 2011 total employment 29,119,000
However, these were seasonally adjusted numbers. The actual unadjusted numbers are:
May-Jul 2010 total employment 29,128,000This is a net GAIN of 50,000 jobs.
Sep-Nov 2011 total employment 29,178,000
So FactCheck got their facts wrong and David Cameron got his right. There ARE more people in work than at the last general election. They are real jobs, not artificially adjusted ones.
Channel 4 say that:
...the only people Mr Cameron is managing to keep firmly in employment is the FactCheck team.Well, if they want to keep their jobs may they should learn how to read the statistics before quoting from them.
Update:
It seems that Ed Miliband got his facts wrong too.
I suggest you read the ONS Statistical guidelines. When comparing data across years it is recommended that the Seasonally Adjusted figures are used.
ReplyDeleteThe seasonally adjusted figures are based on the unadjusted figures.
DeleteThe unadjusted figures represent the actual number of jobs. The seasonally adjusted figures smooth out changes due to seasonal fluctuations (hence the name) but do not represent the actual number of jobs.
Cameron said there were more jobs. There were more jobs. He was right. FactCheck and Ed Miliband were wrong.