Still failing to see economic recovery among friends and acquaintances, or just driving down the road, I, Dufus, went to the BLS web site to see what I could find. As you might expect, it was nothing. Actually, I am on a quest to discredit IMPLAN numbers with real-world stats.

I started by going to the at-a-glance page for Asheville. It says the number of people employed here is about 183,000. Surely, they refer to the MSA, as our population is about a million less than that number. Attempting to find out if the number of employed was a sloppy term for the number of jobs, or if one guy working eight jobs only counted once, or working eight jobs, three hours each, I found nothing.

Nothing is said about changes to definitions of fulltime employment, nor is any distinction made for FTE vs. one-hour-a-week employment. At first, the page had the heading, “Employment, Hours, and Earnings” with no trap door into data for hours and earnings. Having clicked around and returned to the page, the bit about “Hours and Earnings” was no longer there.

A popup window appeared asking if I wanted to take a survey about the web site. And how! But the window for requesting to take the survey later was inoperable, and so I x-ed it out. Oh, well.

The page is somewhat deceptive in that it lists percent changes over the last year by month. Therefore, a quick glance might lead somebody to believe that side-by-side monthly percent changes of 1.1, 1.1, 3.1, -0.4, and 4.0 for “Leisure and Hospitality” is cumulative when consecutive 1.1’s, for example, indicate there has been no change.

After taking the dog to the vet, I, Dufus, returned to the computer and found this page. Variables are defined a little better, but they are still wanting. That is, “employment” is explicitly defined as “jobs,” but who the blank knows what a job is? Whatever they are, be it one or 67 hours a week, the Asheville MSA gained 5200 from October 2013 – October 2014.

The chart showing the number of employees shows a one-to-one correspondence for jobs and employees – except that the definition of “employees” is the same as “jobs.” So, if you work three jobs, you are considered three employees.

Now, for the most amazing part of the story, we can attribute all these jobs to the Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Commission. As you may recall, they developed a “5×5 Plan” with the intent of creating 5000 jobs in Buncombe County over a five year period. Why, GE Aviation alone promised the county 2700 jobs during its recruitment and expansion phase, which would result in 750 permanent jobs in the Asheville area. Keeping my brain on the shelf to swallow the jargon, I may deduce this leads to 3450 jobs, but it is probably more, right? As of an undated glossy, the “5×5 Plan” had already taken credit for 3739 jobs.

And you thought the hobbling mom and pop shops could engage in job creation. Ha-rumph!