Stats Rant continued

This is probably very boring to nearly everyone reading this but having another look at the employment statistics I noticed a great graph



This shows the 95% confidence levels for employment in Wales since Jul-Sep 2008.

Below I've coloured in the area of the graph that has always been within the confidence levels.






What this means is that it is well within the realms of probability that employment in Wales has been at a constant of anything between 67% and 68.5%. It is quite likely that it hasn't changed at all and if it has changed there is no way for us to know if it has gone up or down. These figures are based on relatively small samples (when you get down to the "regional" level) and there accuracy is not great.

During this time though the BBC has announced:
31,000 fewer Welsh jobs available
Unemployment in Wales falls to lowest level in a year
Unemployment total drops by 2,000 in Wales
Unemployment in Wales rises to 125,000
Unemployment falls only in Wales

Not one report mentions the massive innacuracy of the figures they are quoting and reports the "rise" or "fall" as being an accurate picture of what's happening in Wales.

I am not trying to have a go simply at thee beeb. On the whole thier news coverage of Wales is considerably better than anyone else. But surely they have someone with enough of a grasp of figures to do better reports than this. It is pretty lazy journalism.