Once again, business reporters are wrong

Yahoo! News - Self-Employment May Mask U.S. Job Growth: "Self-Employment May Mask U.S. Job Growth

Sat Jan 31, 8:39 AM ET
By Andrea Hopkins

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - According to the most widely accepted measure of U.S. employment, public-speaking coach and consultant LeeAundra Temescu was not among the 130 million Americans who had a job in 2003.

But don't try telling her that.

'Was I working?' the Los Angeles resident said. 'In terms of speaking and writing and marketing and doing all that sort of stuff -- yeah, I was working.'

Because she is one of more than 15 million self-employed workers in the United States, Temescu is on nobody's payroll -- and thus does not show up on the Labor Department (news - web sites)'s employer survey used each month to assess the strength of the job market."

I wonder where they get the figure that there are 15 million self-employed workers. I'm looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics page detailing these, and I see 9,412,000 in nonagricultural industries, plus 870,000 in agricultural industries. This is in table A-22 of the Employment Situation. This is the household survey, that calls households and asks them. Look it up. But I find this next quote even more appalling.

For much of 2003, she was one of 60,000 surveyed for the household report. Trying to categorize herself as "employed" or "unemployed" was tough in a week when she had no paying clients but was busy marketing. And she said the Census Bureau (news - web sites) questioners were just as confused about her employment status.

That's just not true. If a person is self-employed, and is "busy marketing", she would be considered employed. However, if she considered herself unemployed because she wasn't working, and was seeking full-time employment, she would not be considered employed. It's that simple. Only someone deliberately obtuse would find it otherwise. And because of the other errors in this article, I have to find the author deliberately obtuse.

Of course, this kind of deliberate obtuseness plays right into the hands of the Bush Administration, who want to make the American public think that its not that hard to find a job. But re-read the article, and you realize that this person doesn't have enough work, and wants a full-time job. Otherwise, she would have been included in the self-employed every week.

What I don't understand are: 1. Where did the 15 million number come from? 2. If there is a problem with the household survey with respect to the self-employed, why didn't they pick a stronger example?