Tag Archives: data

USAFacts: An Injection of Facts

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Have you ever wondered where the US tax revenue exactly comes from and where it goes? To most US citizens the thought of traversing a mountain of US government financial data could seem like a nightmare. But this nightmare is no more, thanks to our friendly neighborhood (former) Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer. With the help of economists, writers, researchers from the academic communities, Ballmer was able to compile government financial data into a user-friendly format. USAFacts is this “portrait” of the US tax system. USAFacts is described by Ballmer a “nonpartisan, data-driven” website that provides reports on the US population Continue reading USAFacts: An Injection of Facts→

Seasonal Incompetence Disorder

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This past Friday, the BLS released its monthly jobs report: unemployment rate down to 5.5%, and 295K jobs added in the month of February. The details of the report are here. Policy makers look to the employment numbers to gain insight regarding economic trends: are more people seeking work? Are more businesses hiring? Tracking these trends can better inform economic policy making. However, in a recent WSJ Op-Ed, Daniel Quinn Mills, a professor of business administration at Harvard took issue with how the BLS data are reported. Employment data is often impacted by seasonally-recurring phenomena. For example, the 295K “jobs added” figure Continue reading Seasonal Incompetence Disorder→