The 2012 preliminary census report – already two years late – is probably more famous for what it conceals than what it reveals. The report invested great effort in emphasizing the housing building stock, but nothing was said about the ethnic composition of the society, religious composition or anything dealing with the labour force that could possibly reveal the unemployment rate or labour force participation rate. This column has argued on several occasions a population census is not the best tool to study the labour force or unemployment given the cyclical component of unemployment. A census is most likely to give structural unemployment but not the frictional and cyclical aspects. Nonetheless the census is the best we’ve got for gauging the unemployment rate that is now hidden on some computer hard drive at the Bureau of Statistics.
Economists, political scientists and others make their living studying data. It is hard for me not to come away with the feeling that this report was deeply influenced by a political invisible hand, instead of providing the society with an essential public good – raw data. The column on GDP growth (May 15, 2014) gave the Bureau the benefit of the doubt. But this report will dent public confidence – at least mine – in the data produced by the Bureau of Statistics, including the national accounts statistics. Of course there is a big difference between raw data and information. The analyst is expected to utilise an econometric or statistical tool – descriptive or inferential – to convert raw data into information. Once carefully gathered, data cannot lie but the analyst can. If the analyst’s work is not believable one can always go back to the data to verify his argument and methodology. But how are we to test narrative subjective analyses that are opinion based? Therefore, those who keep
