Some data on gun violence

My personal view (if it matters) is that the issue of gun violence in the U.S. will not be "resolved" by any simple (or popular) measures.  The issue is just too complicated for that.  But let's not ignore the data on the pervasiveness of gun violence.  Ezra Klein helps us with this (see here).

Great graphic on the S & P 500

The Wall Street Journal has a neat graphic on the S & P 500.

State unemployment rates for November

Calculated Risk (see here) summarizes the data on unemployment rates by state for November.

Pew data on government benefits

The Pew Research Center (see here) report shows we are increasingly a "bipartisan nation of beneficiaries."

The fiscal cliff

If you are trying to get some perspective on the Fiscal Cliff, you could do worse than ponder this graph from the Economist (see here).

A statistic worth pondering

According to November 26 issue of BloombergBusinessweek, from 1993 to 2009 U.S. universities added administrators 10 times as fast as they added tenured faculty.

Thanksgiving economics

Timothy Taylor over at his blog the Conversable Economist (see here) has a nice post on the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner and he has the graph below.  The post is worth a read.

Data on inequality in Mississippi

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (see here) has a very interesting report on "inequality" in the United States (the report contains state-by-state data).  The summary graph below is for Mississippi (listed by CBPP as one of the states with the greatest inequality).

Geography of the Popular Vote

From TPMLiveWire (see here) we have the following (preliminary results):

U.S. Trade Data

The Department of Commerce updates us on U.S. Trade (revised through September 2012):

The Fiscal Cliff

Well, there is bound to be considerable interest in the Fiscal Cliff now that the election is over.  The Wall Street Journal (see here) has a nice graphic summarizing it.

Good day for "poll quants"

Well, the election is over and there are some big winners other than the political candidates; namely, the "poll quants" as there are called.  That is, the statistically trained people who used sophisticated models to forecast the results of the election (for example, see Nate Silver's work at the blog FiveThirtyEight, Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium, and Drew Linzer at Votamatic).  That were spot on while all the political pundits were way off (to be kind).

A reminder!

Just a reminder for all those people (and there appear to be lots of you) who wonder why the U.S. economy hasn't been "fixed" yet (as if we were repairing a washing machine).  The graph below uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is posted by Catherine Rampell (see here).

She also has the following graph in her November 2 article in the New York Times (see here).

Most costly hurricanes/storms

Sad, indeed

Lawrence Mischel (see here) expresses my sentiments over the claim (by Jack Welch, among other conspiracy nuts) that the BLS manipulated the data:

This controversy is not funny at all. BLS career staff has been inundated with calls from people attacking them, the predictable consequence of these conspiracy charges. BLS staff should not be facing this type of harassment. This whole episode makes me angry—at the disrespect for facts and the professionals at BLS—and it also makes me sad about the state of discourse in our nation.

Big Bird on the dole

From Salon (see here) Big Bird may be joining the unemployed.

Output gap - Federal Reserve of Atlanta

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (see here) has some interesting data on the "output gap" (see below).

About the data, they say:

In this month's BIE survey we went fishing in the same murky waters, but this time we took a more direct approach. We asked our panel to provide a percentage estimate of how far their sales levels are above/below "normal." Here's what we found: On a gross domestic product (GDP)–weighted basis, the panel estimates that current sales are about 7.5 percent below normal. That's more slack than the conventional estimates, like the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) measure of the GDP gap, which puts the economy about 6 percent under its potential.

Student debt - again

The Pew Research Center (see here) has the following graph on the growth of student loan debt.  And, yes, it is in adjusted dollars.

The Great Recession update

As I have said before, the folks over at Calculated Risk do a great job informing us with graphs.  They have updated one of their graphs (see below - click to enlarge -  and see here for more).

They comment as follows:

When the Great Recession is compared ... to the Big 5 financial crises and the U.S. Great Depression ... the current cycle actually compares pretty favorably. This is likely due to the coordinated global response to the immediate crises in late 2008 and early 2009. While the initial path of both the global and U.S. economies in 2008 and 2009 effectively matched the early years of the Great Depression – or worse – the strong policy response employed by nearly all major economies – both monetary and fiscal – helped stop the economic free fall.

The challenge of surveys

The Public Religion Research Institute (see here) is out with a new survey on the "complexities of white the working class" in the U.S.  One of their charts (see below) has some interesting findings.

The research shows that" Southern white-working class Americans stand out from white working-class Americans in the Northeast, Midwest, and West on a number of cultural attitudes and attributes."  The research reminds us again of the challenges of interpreting surveys when using categories or labels without precise definitions.

Political parties and the credibility challenge

I have been unable to muster much passion for political elections for quite some time.  This is probably more of a personal issue than anything else, but presently we have a very contested Presidential election that ostensibly appears to be about the "size" of government and the trajectory of government spending.  So, the American citizen is suppose to choose between two parties that assure us they are up to the task.  Well the graph below (you can find the source here) indicates it just isn't so.

I can do no better than Nick Gillespie's (The Fiscal Times) comments on the graph:

Two things stand out: George W. Bush was god-awful. And Barack Obama looks to be even worse (note: fiscal 2009 includes spending attributable to both adminstrations).

A third observation: The Republicans seem to be the ones who ratchet up spending while the Dems solidify that amount. Which party will grow into being the crew that brings spending down to something that is affordable?

I'm not hopeful that either party is up to the task!

Income and the Middle Class

I've read several posts and comments recently about how both President Obama and Governor Romney are talking about the "middle class"  (see this post over at Economix by Catherine Rampell).  I suppose there isn't a widely accepted standard definition in use here, but I find it bothersome when both candidates refer to "people with incomes less than or equal to $250,000 as "middle class."  Using data from the Tax Policy Center (see here), I generated the graph below:

Note that $250,000 of income is about the 96th percentile (clearly not anywhere near the "middle").  Thus I do not know in what sense this is meaningfully viewed as middle class.

Nice graphic on quantitative easing

The Wall Street Journal (see here) has a nice graphic that illustrates how Quantitative Easing works (see graph below, click to enlarge).

Who pays the top income tax rate?

David Cay Johnston answers the question for us (see here).

Data on teachers' salaries

Catherine Rampell over at the New York Times blog (see here) has some very interesting data on teachers' pay.  She asks:  Does it pay to become a teacher?  Well....

OK, I can't help it

Well, as the Republicans gather in Tampa for their convention, I can't help myself.  Much is being made of the "economic ideas" they are offering and the contrast of those ideas with the recent past.  Indeed, Mr. Ryan claims to draw upon the work of some "brilliant thinkers" like Frederick Hayek in order to provide some intellectual "weight" for his proposals (think Medicare).  Well, while you listen to the stirring speeches, keep the following quote in front of you:

Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.

And who is the author of this quote?  It is from Frederick Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.   It makes you wonder if they read these books or just use them to decorate their offices or serve as props for TV interviews.

More data from Pew

Jordan Weissmann over at The Atlantic (see here) points us to one of the more interesting graphs in the Pew report on the middle class (see graph below, click to enlarge).

Weissmann says:

Here's the arc it captures: In the immediate postwar period, America's rapid growth favored the middle and lower classes. The poorest fifth of all households, in fact, fared best. Then, in the 1970s, amid two oil crises and awful inflation, things ground to a halt. The country backed off the postwar, center-left consensus -- captured by Richard Nixon's comment that "we're all Keynesians now" -- and tried Reaganism instead. We cut taxes. Technology and competition from abroad started whittling away at blue collar jobs and pay. The stock market took off. And so when growth returned, it favored the investment class -- the top 20 percent, and especially the top 5 percent (and, though it's not on this chart, the top 1 percent more than anybody).

Pew Research Center data on Middle Class

The Pew Research Center (see here) has released a new report on the status of the middle class.  The report is entitled "The Loss Decade of the Middle Class," so you get the thrust of their findings.  Below is a graph from the report (click to enlarge).

From the report:
"Fully 85% of self-described middle-class adults say it is more difficult now than it was a decade ago for middle-class people to maintain their standard of living. Of those who feel this way, 62% say “a lot” of the blame lies with Congress, while 54% say the same about banks and financial institutions, 47% about large corporations, 44% about the Bush administration, 39% about foreign competition and 34% about the Obama administration. Just 8% blame the middle class itself a lot."

Remembering Karl Fleming

Karl Fleming died this past weekend at the age of 84.  His book "Son of the Rough South" has continued to have a significant influence on me.  As a Southerner I continue to struggle with the history of my region.  Mr. Fleming, in my view, took truth seriously - truth about the South and about himself.  The L.A. Times said,

"Karl Fleming risked his life covering James Meredith's entry into the University of Mississippi and the deaths of three civil rights workers in 1964. He was badly beaten after the Watts riots in 1965."

I will always be thankful for his contributions.

New research that is troubling

In a new book by Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Power in America, the author reveals some findings that are quite troubling.  On the blog The Monkey Cage (see here) he summarizes some of his findings (see graph below, click to enlarge).

On the blog he states:

"These findings suggest that political representation functions reasonably well for the affluent. But the middle-class and the poor are essentially unrepresented (unless they happen to share the preferences of the well-off)."

Update on student loan debt

The Wall Street Journal (see here) has an update on the issue of growing student debt (see graph below, click to enlarge).

The authors state:

"According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of recently released Federal Reserve data, households with annual incomes of $94,535 to $205,335 saw the biggest jump in the percentage with student-loan debt from 2007 to 2010, the latest figures available. That group also saw a sharp climb in the amount of debt owed on average."

"The figures put this segment at the heart of a larger trend striking across income groups. More than three million households now owe at least $50,000 in student loans, up from about 794,000 in 2001 and fewer than 300,000 in 1989, after adjusting for inflation."

Interesting data on income in the U.S. by sex

Over at the blog Political Calculations (see here) there is a very interesting post on "average real income in the U.S. by sex."  The graph below (click to enlarge) summarizes matters.

Here is an excerpt from the commentary:

"It's also interesting to note that since 1947, the annual average income earned by all individual women has nearly tripled, while the income for men has increased by a factor of 2.1. Meanwhile, the average income earned by all Americans has gone up by slightly less, doing just better than doubling in value during the time from 1947 to 2010."

Some data on health care spending

Aaron Carroll has a post at the blog The Incidental Economist (see here) in which he comments on a recent report "The Concentration of Health Care Spending" (NICHM report, see here).  The report contains the following graph:

Carroll comments on the graph as follows:

"That’s the cumulative distribution of personal health care spending from 2009. There are so many ways to talk about this. One thing to note is that the top 5% of spenders (some of the sickest among us) account for about half of all health care spending. More significantly, the bottom half of spenders (ie the healthier half) account for less than 3% of all health care spending."

"When we talk about incentivizing people to forego care, we’re talking mostly about healthy people. When we talk about consumer directed health care, we’re talking mostly about healthy people. We don’t want sick people to avoid care. We want to stop healthy people from consuming it. The problem is that healthy people consume so little care to begin with. If we could incentivize the healthier half of people to forego all their personal health care spending, we’d spend $36 billion less out of a total $1.259 trillion in personal health care spending. That would be a drop in the bucket. And no one – no one at all – thinks we can get people to stop all their health care spending."

Merrill Goozner at the Fiscal Times (see here) has a post about the same data.  Goozner says, "The study serves as a cautionary note to advocates on the left or right who think eliminating waste or giving “consumers” a greater financial stake in health care decision-making will be magic bullets for holding down rising health care costs."  Indeed it does!  As I have said before, so much of the conversation about health care just isn't relevant to the everyday challenges people confront when accessing U.S. health care systems.  From the claim that health care should be treated as a "market" (really, please, where have you been receiving your health care?) to the notion that costs can be cut while access increases and new techniques/procedures are welcomed.  Mr. Carroll and his colleagues at The Incidental Economist constitute a small minority of experts that actually get it.  And they pay attention to the data instead of ideology and platitudes.

More on the issue of income inequality

David Leonhardt over at the New York Times blog Economix (see here) takes another look at the issue of income inequality.  He summarizes the data as follows:

"Over a longer term, though, the affluent have done extremely well. Since 1980, a household at the cutoff for the top 1/1,000th of earners — making about $1.5 million in 2010 — has received a pay increase of more than 100 percent, after adjusting for inflation. A household in the middle of the income distribution has received an inflation-adjusted raise of only 11 percent."  (See graph below, click to enlarge).

David Wessel on taxes

David Wessel had a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal (see here) on the issue of taxes - how much and who pays.  As is usually the case with Wessel's writing, he looks at the data.  In the piece he says:

"Over the past three decades, Americans—including most of the rich—have paid less of their incomes to Washington. Top earners have received more of the income and paid more of the taxes; a growing number at the bottom have paid less or, in some cases, nothing."

 The piece has a very informative graph (see below, click to enlarge).

Report on "For-Profit" Colleges

Chairman Tom Harkin and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee released their report on for-profit colleges (the full report can be downloaded here).  Dylan Matthews at the Washington Post provides us with a nice summary of key findings (see here).  Some of these findings (with Matthews comments) are as follows:

• Graduation rates are abysmal:  "The report finds that 62.9 percent of students who enrolled in an associate’s degree program at a for-profit college in the 2008-09 school year left before finishing their degree, and that the median student lasted only four months. A smaller majority — 54.3 percent – left bachelor’s programs before graduating, and 38.5 percent left certificate programs"
• The tuition is very expensive:   "Bachelor’s programs cost an average of 20 percent more, and associate’s programs an average of quadruple public school tuition."
• Most of the revenue collected by for-profit colleges is supplied by the government:   "In the 2009-2010 school year, $7.5 billion in Pell Grants, 50 percent of Defense Department education aid, and 37 percent of GI bill aid went to for-profits, money that, because of the programs’ much higher costs, financed significantly less education than it would have if directly at public or private non-profit institutions."  In fact, the report shows that on average about 86% of the revenue collected by for-profit colleges is composed of Federal dollars.

One other interesting finding of the report is:   "Actual instruction made up a paltry 17.2 percent of expenses."  On this front, many public and not-for-profit private colleges don't fair much better.  The trend in higher education in the U.S. shows an increasing amount of the cost of operating the institution goes for costs other than instruction (and the percent of the total that is instruction is decreasing).

Jobs and the Great Recession in perspective

Calculated Risk (see here) once again provides us with a superb graph clearly summarizing the depth of this recession and its impact on jobs (see graph below, click to enlarge).

Comments from Calculated Risk:

"This shows the depth of the recent employment recession - worse than any other post-war recession - and the relatively slow recovery due to the lingering effects of the housing bust and financial crisis."

Interesting data from the Jobs Report

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (see here) highlights a finding from the recent Jobs Report (see graph below, click to enlarge).

The CBPP says:

"The cuts to public employment rolls also hurt the recovery.  When teachers and other public employees like police and firefighters lose their jobs, they have to cut back on spending.  Less spending means fewer customers for businesses and a resulting drag on the recovery."

Brookings provides us with the full picture (see here).

Brookings says:

"The ... chart reveals that once the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) began to phase down – and state and local governments struggled to balance their budgets – government employment dropped precipitously and now stands at 9.0 percent."

Yet, we still here it loudly proclaimed that the ARRA didn't do anything to improve the economy.  Please..

Good piece on Bernanke

BloombergBusinessweek (see here) has a good piece on Chairman Bernanke and the dilemma the Fed faces.  It also contains a nice graphic of the players at the Fed (see below).

The following quote from the piece is important:

"Economists on both sides of the political aisle largely agree that Bernanke was right to throw a lifeline to banks and the shadow banking system at a time of maximum peril."

Why our political leaders can't get together on the issue of Fiscal Policy is deeply frustrating.  Political positioning (Democrats and Republicans) and ideological foolishness (Republicans) are thwarting sound economic policies.

What did we think would happen?

The Wall Street Journal (see here) has a piece that says "Under pressure to squeeze out costs, some of the U.S.'s biggest health insurers are quietly erecting more hurdles for patients seeking medical care" (see graph below, click to enlarge).  What did we think would happen?

Aaron Carroll over at The Incidental Economist (see here) summarizes this well.

"The problem isn’t that we don’t know what to do. It’s that we don’t like the tradeoffs involved in any choices. We don’t like giving up anything – ever. So we keep casting about for the perfect solution to the problem. You know, the one where no one is ever denied any treatment, where no one is ever told they can’t see a certain doctor, where no one ever waits at all for elective care, where no one makes any less money, and where no government is involved at all. Oh – and it massively reduces spending and fixes the deficit."

Equality of economic opportunity

Timothy Taylor (see here) takes us through a new paper from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (see here) which examines "equality of opportunity" (see the table below, click to enlarge).

 

Taylor says:

"Here's a table that illustrates some of the movement to greater equality of opportunity in the U.S. economy. White men are no longer 85% and more of the managers, doctors, and lawyers, as they were back in 1960. High skill occupation is defined in the table as "lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, architects, mathematicians and executives/managers." The share of white men working in these fields is up by about one-fourth. But the share of white women working in these occupations has more than tripled; of black men, more than quadrupled; of black women, more than octupled."

New report from Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center has a new report (see here) which analyzes the amount of "residential segregation" that has emerged over the past few years (see graph below, click to enlarge).

 The report states;

"Despite the long-term rise in residential segregation by income, it remains less pervasive than residential segregation by race, even though black-white segregation has been falling for several decades."

Which large metro areas have the most residential segregation?

The drought and crop insurance

The Wall Street Journal (see here) has a piece on the extensive use of crop insurance, particularly its impact given current drought conditions.  The graph below looks at the corn crop for the to 10 producers (click to enlarge).

The author of the piece says:

"The most popular insurance policy allows farmers to take advantage of those higher prices. Farmers can insure up to 85% of their average production at fall prices. So for every bushel the crop is short, a farmer can collect the going price in October. Nearly 70% of the nation's crops last year were insured, with levels for corn and soybean acreage even higher. Numbers aren't yet available for 2012."

Will the Fed act?

The Wall Street Journal (see here) has an interesting piece that considers the likelihood of action from the Federal Reserve given the slowing economic conditions (see graph below, click to enlarge).

CDC releases data on "Deaths in the U.S., 2010"

The CDC (see here) has released data from the "National Vital Statistics System" on mortality (2010).  The release includes the following graph on "age-adjusted death rates by state" (click to enlarge).

The report states:

"States experience different risks of mortality. Hawaii has the lowest age-adjusted death rate (589.6 deaths per 100,000 population) of all the states, 21.0 percent lower than the rate for the United States (746.2). Mississippi had the highest age-adjusted death rate in 2010 (961.9), 28.9 percent higher than the U.S. rate."

"In general, states in the southeast region have higher rates than those in other regions of the country. Louisiana, for example, is typical of the region and has an age-adjusted death rate of 903.8 deaths per 100,000 population."

And the leading causes of death?  The top five are:  unintentional injury, homicide, suicide, cancer, and heart disease.  How do the causes vary by age?  See the graph below (from the report - click to enlarge).

Key findings from the report are:

• Life expectancy at birth is 78.7 years. Hispanic females have the longest life expectancy (83.8 years) followed by non-Hispanic white females (81.1 years).
• The largest decrease in mortality between the years 2000 and 2010 occurred in the age group under age 25 years (15.8 percent), followed by those aged 65 years and over (13.3 percent).
• States in the southeast region generally have higher death rates than those in other regions of the country.
• In 2010, the five leading causes of death were: heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, and accidents. The ranking of conditions varies according to demographics such as age, sex, and race.
• The infant mortality rate reached a record-low level of 6.14 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2010.

The Great Recession and GDP

Political Calculations (see here) has an informative post on the impact of the Great Recession on GDP (see graph below).

The post summarizes as follows:

"The quick takeaways:

• The U.S. economy performed better than previously reported in 2009, as the December 2007 recession bottomed and began turning around.
• The economic recovery following the bottoming of the recession has been far weaker than the previously reported data indicated.
• We really don't know what to make of the GDP data recorded in 2011-Q4 onward, where the reported data is really characterized by its relative lack of adjustment in the BEA's 27 July 2012 revision. It would be really odd that after the rather large adjustments of 2009 through 2011-Q3 that the BEA would suddenly master the determination of GDP for just these most recent quarters."

The LIBOR mess

Several people have asked me about the LIBOR "scandal."  I certainly can't do any better than David Warsh, so I'll send you to his post (click here).

The "sustainable" university report

A new report (website is here) attempts to assess the financial status of U.S. colleges and universities (public and private).  It is interesting reading.  It primarily evaluates the financial status of these institutions by estimating their (1) increase in expense ratio, (2) decrease in equity ratio, and (3) endowment per full-time-equivalent enrollment.  I have extracted the data for several Mississippi colleges and universities (see below).

 

The report contains the following:

You might be at risk if….

1. You are not a top-ranked institution
   • Your admissions yield has fallen and it’s costing you more to attract students
   • Median salaries for your graduates have been flat over a number of years
   • Your endowment is in the millions not billions, and a large percentage is restricted
2. Your financial statements don’t look as good as they used to
   • Your debt expense has been increasing far more rapidly than your instruction expense
   • Your property, plant and equipment (PP&E) asset is increasing faster than your revenue
   • You have seen a decline in net tuition revenue
   • Tuition represents an increasingly greater percentage of your revenue
   • Your bond rating has gone down
   • You are having trouble accessing the same level of government funding
3. You have had to take drastic measures
   • You are consistently hiking tuition to the top end of the range
   • You have had to lower admissions standards
   • You have had to cut back on financial aid
   • You have reduced your faculty head count

Income inequality and health care access

As is obvious from this blog, I really appreciate good data analysis and good data presentation.  The professionals who blog at The Incidental Economist (see here) do some of the best work out there and keep up with others who do so as well.  Aaron Carroll points us to a very interesting statistical graphic that attempts to summarize "needs-adjusted probability of a doctor's visit."  The graph below (click to enlarge) is from an OECD working paper (see here).

Carroll makes the following comments (bold emphasis is mine) about the graph:

"The first thing to note is that the average rate of a visit to the doctor varies among all these countries from a high of 91% in France to a low of 68% in the United States. Think about that the next time someone tells you how our problem is that we consume too much health care."

"The second thing to note is how much variation there is between those at the upper and lower end of the economic spectrum. In the UK, for instance, there is almost no difference in utilization between the rich and the poor. All see the doctor equally. In most other countries, though, there is some inequality based on income."

"None as great as the United States, though. The difference between the probability of seeing the doctor for the poor and wealthy is greater in the US than in any of the other measured countries."

"People like to believe that we don’t ration care in the US. We do. More than just about any other country, we ration by cost."

David Wessel on the federal budget

David Wessel (see here) has a very informative piece in the Wall Street Journal regarding "the essential facts" of the federal budget.  His piece contains the graph below (click to enlarge).  The entire piece is a "must read" for everyone.

Below are the "essential facts" according to Wessel.

1. Nearly two-thirds of annual federal spending goes out the door without any vote by congress.
2. The U.S. defense budget is greater than the combined defense budgets of the next 17 largest spenders.
3.  About $1 of every $4 the federal government spends goes to health care today.  This is rising inexorably.
4. Firing every federal employee wouldn't save enough to cut the deficit in half.
5. The share of income most American families pay in federal taxes has been falling for more than 30 years.
6. The federal government borrowed 36 cents of every dollar it spent last year, but had no trouble raising the money.

Wessel concludes his piece with the following:

"This truly is unsustainable. The U.S. today is in the postdenial phase of coping with deficits, the ones that will persist even after the economy regains its health. No one of consequence in Washington argues that deficits don't matter. Deciding what to do about them is contentious because it's about apportioning the pain. Getting the facts straight is a necessary first step"

The plight of the "middle class"

David Leonhardt (see here) has the following data for us regarding the middle class.

He says:

"Since median inflation-adjusted family income peaked in 2000 at $64,232, it has fallen roughly 6 percent. You won’t find another 12-year period with an income decline since the aftermath of the Depression."

Another thing you think you know... that isn't true

Jared Bernstein (see here) takes a close look at BLS data regarding firm size and job creation (see graph below, click to enlarge).

Bernstein says,

"So, the question is, do any of these size classes contribute disproportionately to job growth?  In fact, they do, and the winner is…not small firms.  Whether is business cycle expansions or the full run of these data, large firms — 500+ employees — contribute disproportionately to job growth.  The small firms — less than 50 workers — in fact, contribute proportionately less than their share."

As he explains in his post, the BLS looks at the data by firm size, while others (especially those who make the claim that small business contribute more to employment) do so by establishment size.  An an establishment can be "units of large firms."