Wednesday 8 July 2015

Statistics, Statistics and Damned Lies?

Statistics, Statistics, and Damned Lies?

 I just realise that I never posted this last year (been a bad one):

Amidst the row between the government and a charity who was trying to highlight poverty in the UK, I came across some strange figures. Please forgive me if I'm not cognisant with regard to how unemployment and employment figures work, but when the head of this charity Ben Phillips spoke in an article about the 'fact' that there are 2 million new jobs in the economy since the coalition came to power, I was slightly confused. The figures below demonstrate why:



 Unemployment figures for years April 2010-April 2014:

2010 - 2.5 million

2011 - 2.51 million (May 2011)

2012 - 2.65 million

2013 - 2.56

2014 - 2.24 million

Hate to state the obvious - and I realise that officially since 2010 unemployment (those officially claiming unemployment benefits) has dropped by some 250,000 - but 2 million new jobs? Wouldn't that mean there would only be around 240,000 unemployed now?

Just another example of statistic manipulation perhaps?



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