Whether error or manipulation, claim about jobs is utter rubbish
24 November 2018
PAUL FLANAGAN | Edited extracts
CANBERRA – Papua New Guinea’s budget for 2019 is scattered with factual errors. In this short article, I want to consider the government’s public assertion about employment.
The budget claims in the budget that total employment grew by 1.6% in the last year. In fact, it declined by 2.9%.
This significant error was repeated in double-page advertisements in the national newspapers promoting the government’s economic performance.
These included a graph showing employment increasing strongly from 2014. A fact check indicates that in reality it had fallen by 6.6% since 2014.
So why did the budget graph show employment as increasing since 2014?
The most likely explanation is total statistical incompetence.
However, as there is a pattern of these ‘convenient’ statistical mistakes in the detail of the PNG budget, possibly there is a more Orwellian pattern emerging.
The government’s misleading advertisements of 20 November promoting the budget were conveniently timed for the day the Opposition provided its budget response.
The budget graph showing an upsurge in employment had initially confused me and other researchers familiar with employment trends in PNG. When the graph was highlighted in the advertisement it was clear it needed closer examination, especially as the heading was deceptive: “The trend for employment growth is positive”.
Also of concern was the positioning of the advertisement next to an upbeat message from Treasurer Charles Abel, which raised an important question in my mind: How can one “fix lingering issues from our past” if that past is misrepresented?
Mr Abel’s accompanying statement about “building a broader economic base” risked building on unsteady foundations if the employment situation was so badly misunderstood.
The real story is very different from the newspaper heading that “The trend for employment growth is positive”. As I mentioned, this claim could result only from a massive statistical error and misunderstanding of indexes or from some form of manipulation.
The actual employment trend in PNG since 2014 can only be described as very poor.
Since 2014, there has been an encouraging increase in formal resource sector employment of 2,787. However, non-resource employment has dropped by over ten times this number with a loss of 28,676 jobs, leading to an overall fall of 6.6% in formal employment.
There needed to be an increase of over 40,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth.
This continuing fall in formal employment is one indicator that the PNG economy is very sick – much sicker than is admitted by the government.
And statistical flaws or manipulations are of no assistance in understanding or remedying this situation.
Like Paul, I did that basic chore of checking beyond “edited extracts” to read Paul’s smart use of the term ‘stupid’.
See: http://pngeconomics.org/author/pngeco5_wp/
As “taught this in basic statistics” (or “Statistics 101”, as some people say for a laugh), only as a joke might a treasured official “add indexes together without checking their respective weights.”
If Sir Michael Somare was moved to tears at the trashing of a haus in Mosbi, the tearing of statistical mapping by graphical errant lines is more of a sore.
Posted by: Lindsay F Bond | 25 November 2018 at 01:46 PM