[washadjeffmad]

Besides (not) being told "this is how we're counting", there are incentives that align with functional overstatement.

A weak example is keeping people on payroll who may not have active contracts. There's no reason to purge them if they're eligible to resume working (within the allowed period, which may be, say, 12-18 months), but it's not strictly fair to count them as being employed in the same way as a traditional 12 month FT hire.

Last year, we purged over a thousand people from payroll who hadn't officially separated. Unusual, but not abnormal. Who would call that a conspiracy?

I think it's convenient to lie in aggregate, especially when "job creation" and high payroll counts loosely correspond to economic growth and if not eligible voters, then at least tax revenues.