Lies, damn lies, and job statistics

DEPENDING where you seek an opinion, 2003 was, in employment terms, “disappointing”, characterised by a “strong performance” or “encouraging” — but only in its omens for 2004.

What makes these interpretations more confusing is that they all come from what could be loosely classified as the State side IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland and Enterprise Minister Mary Harney, respectively.

On that basis, any group of workers at the receiving end of a postbag of P45s would be pardoned for presuming the inventor of statistics was inspired by the elastic band.