Major Adjustment to Unemployment Data Uncovered by Washington Post

The 500,000 temporary Census jobs that temporarily swelled the employment numbers are a minor distortion compared to a stealth government make-work program at least twice the size of the Census, uncovered by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin.

Priest and Arkin write in this morning’s edition :

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

Someone should tell the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Except it’s classified.