We might have been taken for a ride! There may not be even a
single new job created last month(Dec 2003).
They should be spending all their time to concentrate on creating
jobs, rather than finding ways to manipulate statistics to make
them (not us) look good. Let me elaborate.
The news report a few days ago saying jobless rate plunged to 4.5%
seems like a miracle to me, unless it is MIW cooking numbers. So I
spent today thinking about it, and I now know how the cooking is
done!
The MOM has a policy saying that if you are jobless, you MUST
register your name with them (travel there, fill up form, etc) and
after that, they consider ONE person - you - as jobless. They will
let your name exist in their register for THREE months, after which
your name will be automatically removed. To reinstate your name in
the jobless list, you need to go down again to fill up forms all
over again.
The trick is simple - don't care how many out there are jobless, as
long as they didn't fill up forms, they DON'T EXIST!!!
This way, they take away the blips from their radar screen! Then
they publish news reports saying that 5.5% drop to 4.5% even if
less than 0.0001% found jobs. Simple trick isn't it?
Now, imagine if they tweak the 3 months by playing with cut-off
dates, or even changing it to 2 months, 1 month, or into 1 week.
They can even "make-believe" we have FULL employment!
I propose that they use CPF contributions instead. Anyone whose
contribution stopped, had a career history, age 18 to 62, would be
counted as unemployed. Reason is that if last month the worker's
CPF received no contribution, it will mean s/he hasn't got a
job.
What do you guys/gals think of my idea to prevent MIWs from making
the jobless population 'disappear'?
