“The survey results are essentially forecasts of the next quarter, and it appears that they’re not particularly good forecasts,” Brod said.
The employee outlook survey’s biggest flaw, Brod said, is that employers don’t have to say how many workers they intend to hire."
And this:
"Brod crunched numbers based on the past 17 quarters of Manpower’s predictions for the Greensboro-High Point metro.
In 16 of those quarters, the survey found that employers said they likely would hire workers, even if it was only 2 percent in one quarter.
But in all of those quarters, Brod’s formula showed that Manpower’s survey was broadly out of synch with what ultimately happened in the workforce.
To be clear: In many quarters, the metro did, as predicted, add workers. But usually far fewer workers than predicted by the survey.
And in other quarters, despite a positive outlook, the region lost lots of jobs. For example, in the third quarter of 2011, employers predicted they would hire roughly 3,000 workers under Brod’s formula. In fact, the Greensboro-High Point region lost 2,300 jobs — an error of 229 percent."
The survey was wrong every single time just as I've been saying for years. Remember that the next time the local media starts blowing smoke up your ass.
Dr Andrew Brod is an economics professor at UNCG.
