Collecting the data on jobs and unemployment is a complex and inexact science, but one thing they're not is corrupt

Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the United States added 114,000 new jobs in the month of September and the unemployment rate dropped to 7.8%.

The addition of a little over 100,000 jobs would not be enough to move the unemployment rate down from 8.1%, but the 7.8% rate was based partly on a total of 873,000 jobs added. So how is that we have these two jobs figures? And why is it that the 873,000 figure is what is counted for the unemployment rate?

The charge from some quarters of the conservative blogosphere is that the figures were being manipulated by the Obama administration to lower the headline unemployment rate? But let's look at the facts.

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