I don't understand the criticism - the BLS preliminary estimates disagreed with "TrimTabs" estimates by 1.1%, therefore the BLS is horribly inaccurate? According to the article you cite, the BLS final estimates differed from the "TrimTabs" estimates by 0.5%.
Further, I'm not sure how TrimTab's "real time tax data" could possibly measure unemployment - how does TrimTabs know whether someone is looking for work?
I just showed one article and obviously didn't dig too deeply in it. I've been hearing complaints about BLS as long as I've known about BLS and my quick google search was a page of blog posts/articles complaining about it.
>how does TrimTabs know whether someone is looking for work?
How does BLS? By seeing how many people claim benefits? What about those who aren't eligible?
So their just asking people. You know that it's been demonstrated that people will even lie about their personal lives when they believe they are completely anonymous right?
Further, I'm not sure how TrimTab's "real time tax data" could possibly measure unemployment - how does TrimTabs know whether someone is looking for work?