There is news today (from nbcnews.com) that Amazon intends to add 100K of new jobs in the USA. And that might well be a good thing. It might also be only a so-so thing. Or it might be, at net, not so good at all. The thing is, how is one to know without a frame of reference?
This is especially important in jobs reporting. Just throwing job increases, or job decreases, out as a number in isolation doesn't really give us much of a real picture as to whether, and to what degree, the number is actually good or bad.
So, why not have a standard that says such numbers ought to be included with such things as
1: A breakdown of what wage ranges the jobs will have.
2: A further breakdown on how many will be full time, or part time.
3. An indication of whether that puts the company at a net gain, or net loss, in jobs for the quarter, or year.
Of course these are just off the top of my head. Others of you out there might have other suggestions. The bottom line, however is that just throwing a number out without anything to judge it against is worse, in my opinion, than not reporting on the development at all. And if the company involved can't, or won't provide this information, and little else can be dug up from already published info, maybe the thing shouldn't run until that info is available.
No comments:
Post a Comment