Jack welch (Photo credit: challengefuture)

Jack Welch was CEO and later chairman of GE from 1981 to 2001. His primary claim to fame is that he increased GE’s stock valuation by 4000%, making GE the world’s most valuable company at one point. For most of his career he was unknown by the general public, but he was toasted by Wall Street and GE stock owners as the world’s greatest businessman.  

He also was a pioneer in job outsourcing and offshoring, and his accomplishments in that area make Mitt Romney look like a piker.
 GE insisted that its suppliers also outsource and offshore jobs passing the savings along to GE. GE even offered to teach its suppliers how to outsource and offshore.

Early in his career, Jack Welch won the nickname “Neutron Jack” for his ability to empty GE factories of employees and leave the buildings standing empty.

When the jobs report was issued yesterday, Jack Welch questioned the numbers. Just a question he said, having no basis in fact to question the numbers.

I think that Jack Welch is not a reliable source when it comes to challenging the results of BLS jobs numbers. In the longer article above, you can read about how GE cooked the books in order to sustain its stock price and was caught and fined.

Although Welch is superficially a credible figure — indeed, still an idol in certain quarters of American business — he is also a particularly enthusiastic and volatile Romney surrogate,  he admires Romney deeply, perhaps because both have become symbols of “corporate greed, arrogance, and contempt for workers.”

His tweet about the BLS was a political expression, not an expert assessment, and invites skepticism. But Welch certainly is familiar with dubious numbers and political manipulation.
 
Welch, who made news Friday morning for accusing the Labor Department of cooking the books on the good September jobs report to make President Obama look good. Welch doubles down on his accusations, though he says he has no evidence.

The 76-year-old retiree riled up the Twitterverse this morning with a tweet that said, “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.”

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Chris Matthews talks to former CEO of GE Jack Welch, who made news Friday morning for accusing the Labor Department of cooking the books on the good September jobs report to make President Obama look good. Welch doubles down on his accusations, though he says he has no evidence.

“I am doing nothing more than raising the question,” Mr. Welch said. “It’s fact-based.”

Here are Mr. Welch’s facts.

 To hold the unemployment rate even as the population grows, he said, the economy needs to add between 150,000 and 200,000 jobs a month.

“We haven’t reached those numbers at all,” Mr. Welch said. Employers added a seasonally adjusted 114,000 jobs in September, down from a revised 142,000 jobs in August. The economy, however, has added 143,000 jobs a month after revisions this year.

The former GE chief also raised questions about job growth shown in the household survey, which is the source of the unemployment rate. That survey showed a healthy jump of 873,000 jobs in the month, at odds with the 114,000-job gain in the survey of businesses.

“The economy doesn’t feel like it added 873,000 jobs in September,” Mr. Welch said. “There are a number of things here that are open to discussion.”

Still, several economists have pointed out exactly how the unemployment rate can diverge on a month-to-month basis from nonfarm payroll growth. Considering the household survey showed job losses throughout the last few months, September’s sharp gain could be a catch-up from those recent reports.

Filling in for Cavuto, Eric Bolling has a great conversation with former CEO of GE Jack Welch about his earlier tweet about jobs numbers shenanigans. Welch goes into details about why and how the numbers just don’t add up.

Related articles

• WSJ: Jack Welch: ‘I Wasn’t Kidding’
• Is Jack Welch working for Karl Rove? (salon.com)
• Jack Welch the Original BLS Truther (economicpolicyjournal.com)
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• Voter Suppression 2012 Update (3chicspolitico.com)
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• Chicago Tribune: Jack Welch sets Twitter ablaze with Obama job jab