Jobless confusion

Stat-nerds have no fear - this Friday is your day. February's U.S. employment report will be released at 5:30 a.m. (always the first Friday of every month), followed 90 minutes later by the first glimpse of the state's January numbers. A few hours after that come the January data for L.A. County. Normally, state and local numbers are released two or three Fridays after the national report, but Januarys are different. Each year at this time the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics goes through a process called benchmarking. The idea is to take the flood of information that has come in since the initial employment data was first reported and then make adjustments. The adjustments are usually small, though some conspiracy theorists argue that benchmarking is another way for the government to rewrite history. It's a bogus argument since the adjusted numbers can just as easily be worse than better - and besides, government bean counters have an excellent record for keeping their tallies apolitical. That said, reporting two separate sets of data on the same day is bound to cause a little confusion. More information on the annual benchmarking process also is available online at: http://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/article.asp?ARTICLEID=123.