QandO

September 13, 2004

Quarterly Services Survey
Posted by Jon Henke

With typewriters and physical examinations from 1972 dominating the headlines, some other important news has been unfortunately neglected. As I noted last week the Census Department has released "first new economic indicator from the Census Bureau since the 1960s". [first announced Wednesday, Sept 8th]

You may recall that the Daily Mislead hysterically called the forthcoming indicator "the latest in a series of actions by the White House to doctor or eliminate longstanding and nonpartisan economic data collection methods."

Well, it's called the "Quarterly Services Survey (QSS)", and it measures the service sector industries, "which account for nearly 55 percent of the nation’s economic activity". It's hard to see why the Daily Mislead is opposed to a measurement of the Service Sector of our economy, but one suspects it may have more to do with partisanship than with data.

The very first release of the QSS happened this morning [Monday] at 10am. (the QSS homepage is here)

Revenues in three major U.S. services industries increased 5.4 percent from the first quarter to the second quarter to $598.1 billion, the Commerce Department estimated Monday.

5+% growth quarter over quarter is quite good, but it should be noted that the previous quarter saw weak growth, or even decline, in many of those service sectors, so the expansion is not exactly occuring in a straight line.

To date, the Daily Mislead has not announced their specific objection to the Quarterly Services Survey. Nor do I imagine they will. After objecting to the Bush administration "eliminat[ing] longstanding and nonpartisan economic data collection methods", it's hard to see how they could advocate the, er, elimination of a new source of economic data.

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