Is this "Fake News", or just a reporter with a crook calculator?

Have you ever glanced at a media item and just KNOWN that they have got it wrong? This happened today for me, when I caught the headline and the first part of the article on unemployment – here:-

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-16/abs-employment-jobs-data-february/8359312

The quote that caught my eye was this one :-

Unemployment climbed from 5.7 to 5.9 per cent in February as an estimated 6,400 jobs were lost over the month.

My gut told me something was not right. Quite simply, for that to be true, 6400 divided by 0.2% should give me a result around about Australia’s total workforce. True? OK, let’s do the maths

6400 / 0.002 = around 3.2 million. Can it be? The total workforce in a country of 25 million is just over 3 million? That is what my gut had screamed at me – it CAN’T be right.

So I went looking – the ABS website tells me QUITE a different story:-
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/6202.0
The total workforce in Australia is around 12 million not 3.2 million. I thought so….

So – was that earlier article “fake news” then? Or did someone just screw up? Someone was wrong in their story by a factor of nearly 4x.

Where does the truth lie? Was the change in unemployment really only 0.05% and not 0.2%, or was the actual figure of 6400 wrong by a factor of about 4 (i.e. really nearer 1600, not 6400, jobs lost).

Could there be some kind of agenda behind the dissemination of such rubbish?

Or perhaps I am graduating from a Master of Cynicism to a Doctorate !! *rotflmao*

Benny

• This topic was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by  Benny.
• This topic was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by  Benny.