Writes Trump, at Truth Social.
The NYT presentation of this news story is: "Trump to Appoint New Top Labor Official Within Days/President Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday after the agency released dour monthly jobs data."
Mr. Trump fired the top labor official in charge of compiling statistics on employment, Erika McEntarfer, on Friday after the B.L.S. released monthly jobs data showing a significant slowdown in hiring. Mr. Trump accused Ms. McEntarfer, without evidence, of rigging the numbers.
There's that phrase, "without evidence."
That is, she was appointed by President Biden.
Earlier Sunday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, insisted that the administration was “absolutely not” shooting the messenger on the heels of the jobs report. Mr. Hassett repeatedly declined to furnish detailed evidence that would substantiate the president’s claims that the data had been manipulated to hurt him politically....
Since Ms. McEntarfer’s sudden dismissal, economists across the political spectrum have offered a more worrisome assessment, warning that Mr. Trump’s actions threaten to pollute the nonpartisan work at B.L.S. to measure the trajectory of the economy....
I guess there's an implicit presumption that the work has been unpolluted and nonpartisan. There are a lot of places where the phrase "without evidence" could be inserted.
Her dismissal came only hours after the statistics agency reported the slowdown in hiring in July, on top of two substantial downward revisions to its previous estimates of job growth in May and June. While the revision was large, such updates are not out of the ordinary, though Mr. Trump still claimed on social media that the numbers “were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”
“So you know what I did?” Mr. Trump later told reporters, “I fired her, and you know what? I did the right thing.”
Mr. Trump also pointed to past revisions to the jobs data, specifically a report last August that showed employers added roughly 818,000 fewer jobs over a 12-month period than previously believed. Mr. Trump claimed the revision was made “right after the election,” though it actually occurred about two and a half months before the vote....
“When the data are unreliable, when they keep being revised all over the place, then there are going to be people that wonder if there’s a partisan pattern in the data,” he said.
Yes, there are going to be people that wonder if there’s a partisan pattern and there are going to be people who want you to have faith that things are nonpartisan. Mistrust and trust — which do you want more of? Which do you get more of when Trump fires McEntarfer?
Posts
142 comments:
"without evidence" and "Russian disinformation" are back pocket excuses(D). also - BS.
What is 'evidence' for one is not evidence to the other.. Just reveal the facts to the public and let 'em decide.
I have no idea what the president thinks, but I think it is a garbage report from a garbage agency that seems to have no interest in fixing the problem.
In the business world a CEO with a branch like this would fire the person in charge and appoint a new manager with a mandate to clean house and deliver better results.
BLS is supposed to be a nonpartisan entity but they aren’t immune to being corrupted given the right politicians in charge, kind of like our justice system. Appointed by the Biden Administration, you say?
There is a simpler explanation for a lot of things that are cast as political events, such as this one. The extent of the revisions, under McEntarfer’s tenure, was sometime in excess of the actual numbers. In other words, she was frequently wrong, and to an extent that calls into question her competency.
There it is, the nub of the problem. Too many people in too many positions are not good at their job. For political appointments, that is sufficient reason to replace them. You don't have to be from a different party in order to get fired, and just because you got fired, doesn't mean that it's because you're from the 'other side'. You might just suck at your job.
Yes, there are going to be people that wonder if there’s a partisan pattern
The pattern is partisan. The question is whether it is accidental, caused by the usual government ineptitude, or whether it is deliberate.
… and there are going to be people who want you to have faith that things are nonpartisan.
We call them morons.
Poor fellow, he lost Epstein, the election was stolen and now labor data were stolen. What a cross to bear. A victim of a new affliction: encephalo - porosis.
👆What Duty of Inquiry said👆
Bessent and Kevin Hasset also addressed the need to address these obviously broken and useless statistics. IF IT DOESN’T WORK and the old formula doesn’t produce accurate numbers, FIX THE METHOD. Constant revisions? What are they even doing here? Going through the motions?
He should have fired all Biden appointees. All of them.
President Trump - why wait? Drain the swamp.
Democrats fire everyone - you can too. do it.
So, on the sunrise thread I think it was Kak making the point that BLS revisions are kind of a leading indicator - that the revisions reflect momentum in the economy and job market. I think this is plausible. But if so, then the preponderance of downward revisions during the Biden administration would say something about the Biden economy, wouldn't it? An economy which we were told was robust and growing?
It's also plausible that, as others have noted, the revisions go up and down without a meaningful pattern - that they're just an artifact of the poor data currently available on a monthly basis.
I suppose it's also plausible that, as we have learned in many other areas of the federal bureaucracy, there is a bias at work, although it's harder to understand how the BLS books would be cooked since I gather they publish all their data and their methodology. (Then again, the heavy hitters of the Intelligence Community did manage to cook the books back in 2016, didn't they, and get away with it with only impotent protests coming from the right, and a very few voices elsewhere on the political spectrum, thanks to the eager complicity of the press?)
Anyway. Trump fires people a lot, and he seems to go on gut a lot when he does it. I'm not a fan of this behavior, maybe because my guy is not very reliable. But Trump is gonna Trump.
kakscheisser®
Where is the evidence that the numbers were deliberately manipulated? It seems to me that if you are going to fire someone for malfeasance, you should have some evidence of wrongdoing. Simply being appointed by Biden is not justification. And Trump also is mad at Powell, and he was appointed by Trump.
RIP
The Expert. 1917-2015
I am from the Government and I am here to help you in an unbiased, non-partisan, evidence-based way. Also, Trump stinks, America has always been rotten, men are women, all university positions are filled with Democrats because of their merits, same for the civil service and if you don't like the lefty work we've done, we'll take to the streets and gun you all down, you %%$#$##.
Erika McEntarfer..
have you seen pictures of her?
she looks, EXACTLY, like you'd think she'd look.
Right down to the crazy leftie glasses
…part of the problem is nonpartisan- the jobs data is not necessarily robust statistically, it’s more like political polls, big margins or error relative to the numbers reported. Then there’s additional data later and too much subjective timing if revisions…’smoothing’ and such.
The other problem is us- this is supposed to be data for wonks and not an indicator of the effectiveness of a President or his policies. Yet…
He accused her of committing fraud and intentionally providing false numbers. Where's the evidence?
Maybe the new guy can tell us what the "real" job numbers are for May and June. I won't hold my breath.
“Simply being appointed by Biden is not justification.”
Looking at Biden’s roster of appointments, your contention is as laughable as they come, Fredo.
Trump may have fired her, but it only becomes official when all 700 of our Federal District Judges agree. If one disagrees, she'll be back in office. Because they rule America.
And Trump does have "evidence" its from an unnamed source familiar with situation.
Whenever the revisions happen, there needs to be transparency as to why it happened to the extent that it did. Right now, speculation reigns.
The jobs numbers appear to be some of those metrics that are inconsistently and incompletely gathered, but upon which a lot of decisions are made. 1-800-call-DOGE.
Marx is dead. Pass it on.
as Aggie pointed out..
The extent of the revisions, under McEntarfer’s tenure, was sometime in excess of the actual numbers..
Though i'd say, USUALLY in excess. Nearly every month, they'd announce two things:
1) an increase in jobs (usually about 100,000) from last month.
2) a "revision" of last month(usually MORE THAN 100,000).
in other words, a Net LOSS of jobs, but they'd call it an increase.
"the chocolate ration was increased 2 grams from the previous ration" (which was "revised" Down 3 grams)
Here's the thing. I dont doubt for a second that a libtard Biden appointee would lie about the Jobs numbers to hurt Trump. Libtard respect no law and think honesty is for suckers. Their justification is always "fighting "fascism" is too important to be honest/polite/respect the law/follow an agreement/follow society norms/etc."
Labor market data are prone to significant revisions—as evidenced by this month’s substantial downward adjustments—raising concerns that the Federal Reserve could have been reacting to overstated conditions when setting policy. That lag in data accuracy introduces risk, since rate decisions hinge on timely labor statistics that may later prove inaccurate. Consequently, the Fed may have maintained policy under a misleading optimistic outlook, dampening its responsiveness to actual softening in the labor market.
"Where is the evidence that the numbers were deliberately manipulated..."
Where is the evidence that they were not?
What is to be the presumption? Partisanship or nonpartisanship?
Her record of being horrendously wrong so often that revisions exceeding the value of the original reporting have become more common than announcements without expiration dates. Even a weatherman with that record would be fired.
Her published record is the evidence.
Politics and the press still maintain the very Modern assumption there can be true objectivity and lack of bias. Or rather claim to believe this, though some play off wider cultural beliefs (which are now dwindling as true Moderns are a literally dying breed). Other fields know better, that Modern assumptions of objectivity were either intentionally or unintentionally unaware of their actual, influencing biases. The current mode is to admit the bias, not hide from it, and to have tools in place to address it as much as possible. This is true (or was) for how science functions effectively. The unwillingness to move beyond Modern fantasies by supposedly non-partisan press feeds into all sorts of junk reporting that then tries to anoint their favored politics as itself unbiased. It's like a religious zealot claiming they are neutral in religious assessment and seeing their apologetics as objectively true.
The Commissioner job is not a career position. It's an appointment to a term. The Commissioner serves at the pleasure of the President.
Loss of confidence is sufficient reason for replacing McEntarfer.
Was she even really appointed by Biden? Did he even know who she was or that he appointed her?
THe NYT's constantly reports things "Without evidence". Or rather they claim some mysterious anonymous somebody told them the truth. And we can't know who it is, or verify their statements.
To me that equals "without evidence". And of course, if the NYT's likes you, as it liked Biden or Obama, you can say things "without evidence" and the NYT's will just report what they say, without qualification.
Republicans - especially Trump - are the only ones who get the "Without evidence" tag.
Labor market data are prone to partisan manipulating. For example, Obama ordered that BLS stop calculating inflation using labor market participation, because his misery index was approaching Carter's. So one cannot now reliably compare many stats to BO. Same way he stopped counting "gave up looking for a job" in unemployment numbers. There were so many people losing jobs he didn't want the "discouraged" included in unemployment counts. Long ago 5% unemployment would have been considered "full employment" because economists couldn't see it dropping below that but then Barry just changed how it was measured. Voila! New records!
Trump knows the situation. he has the facts. He fired her. The presumption has to be: He's telling the truth. If you have contrary evidence - provide it.
"Mr. Trump fired the top labor official in charge of compiling statistics on employment, Erika McEntarfer, on Friday after the B.L.S. released monthly jobs data showing a significant slowdown in hiring. Mr. Trump accused Ms. McEntarfer, without evidence, of rigging the numbers."
Did the NYT present any evidence that the numbers weren't rigged?
What is to be the presumption? Partisanship or nonpartisanship?
Okay, let’s try again. This misstates the issue. The issue is partisanship or utter incompetence, and either way the first step is termination of employment.
He accused her of committing fraud and intentionally providing false numbers. Where's the evidence?
To paraphrase Harry Reid, "She's gone! Isn't she?" What more do you need.
"Even a weatherman with that record would be fired."
Weathermen are never fired.
"Where is the evidence that they were not?" The person making such a serious allegation should have some obligation in the first instance to provide facts showing fraud (which in the law must be alleged "with particularity")
Regarding the BLM's data...Wharton's Jeremy Siegel says....
Perhaps it has been overlooked or forgotten, that when a journalist inserts the 'without evidence' qualifier, it's an example of lazy journalism. It is incumbent for a journalist, suspecting that an assertion is wrong, to seek out and showcase the evidence that supports their case. A failure to do this always means either (a) that the assertion is really true, but the journalist takes exception to it, or (b) that there is equally no evidence to prove it wrong. Lazy journalism is the bane of our modern political environment.
She's not being prosecuted. When you have a member of your team you may not be able to rely upon, you need to fix it. It's not about her feelings or her needs.
If there's any doubt, there's no doubt. Fix it and get on with the task at hand.
The June 2025 revision was -133,000 jobs — but that’s out of a total workforce of about 159 million. That’s a -0.08% adjustment.
It’s not trivial, but it’s not a smoking gun either.
Revisions like this are standard, especially when the economic tide turns. The CES is most useful for its industry-level detail — not just a single monthly number. Some sectors were revised upward, others down. That’s where the insight lies.
If you’re wondering what’s really going on, look at which industries shifted. That’s where the data speaks loudest.
No need to appoint a new statistician. Introduce a bill in Congress to disband the Department of Labor, then persuade 51% of Congressmen and 60% of Senators to vote for it.
OR: persuade similar majorities of American voters to elect small-government Republicans to Congress, and then pass the bill disbanding DoL.
Trump the master persuader shouldn't have a problem with either option.
Duty of Inquiry said:
In the business world a CEO with a branch like this would fire the person in charge and appoint a new manager with a mandate to clean house and deliver better results.
And this is EXACTLY why I voted for Trump. He is approaching the quagmire and corruption of government from as experienced Business Owner CEO.
The government needs to (must) be approached as a business. Not a charity. Not a partisan project wish list. Not a private money pot for politicians. But as a business that is funded by the shareholders....the taxpaying citizens of the United States.
We want a return on our investment. ROI in the biz world.
What evidence did Biden provide when he made the appointment that she was competent?
I think the jobs data has been wrong for a long time. Seems like a good idea to get someone in there who will figure out new ways to get better data.
Consistently large revisions suggest she's doing a bad job. Consistently large revisions all in the same direction suggest she's doing a partisan job. If you argue that no one could do a better job, then the job is undoable and should be eliminated; bad data is worse than no data.
She should have been fired a year ago. Those numbers are completely unreliable and she seemed to like that way because she didn’t fix it. As far as Trump trusting ANYTHING in our government, would you???
Last month the ADP jobs report showed weak jobs growth and liberals were pointing out that the Tariffs were bad. Then a day or two later, the BLS report came out showing that job growth was fine, so conservatives were making fun of the liberals for relying on the ADP report. Now, it turns out that the BLS report was based on incomplete information and it has been revised to also be bad. It looks like the ADP and BLS reports now agree!
The discrepancy in the data in July should have been considered evidence that the situation was not really clear and both sides pushed to believe their own narrative. Now that it is clear, it's the Right that loses. It won't always be so.
Maybe the moral of the story is that politics has gotten everyone so crazy that they immediately jump on anything that supports their view without really thinking about it.
The BLS follows a standard procedure. Maybe it is not the optimal procedure, but it is boring and regular. I agree that "without evidence" is too weak a statement and BLS deserves a more robust defense than that.
Why do they publishing numbers that they know are inaccurate? If you have to revise the numbers every time, why not wait to publish the numbers until you get more accurate information?
"The June 2025 revision was -133,000 jobs — but that’s out of a total workforce of about 159 million. That’s a -0.08% adjustment."
I don't think that's a useful metric. We care about the AC modulation, not the dc component.
"It is incumbent for a journalist, suspecting that an assertion is wrong, to seek out and showcase the evidence that supports their case." Why isn't it sufficient for the reporter to say that the person who made the allegation provided no evidentiary support. After all if there was evidence certainly the person making the allegation would say what it is.
Trump has said multiple times that she overestimated jobs in 2024 and didn't correct the numbers until after the election, when the truth is that the corrections were made in August 2024. So he has no evidence of fraud and intentionally lies about what happened last year. And you blame the press for pointing this out.
Althouse writes: “What is to be the presumption? Partisanship or nonpartisanship?”
All economic data relies on assessing sample surveys and those can be adjusted when more comprehensive, later surveys come in. You are not required to 'believe' in data, it's not the Immaculate Conception. You are required to look at it and understand it.
NYT finds "no evidence". And now your intrepid commentariat has provided the evidence the NYT ignores: her glasses!
Firing a referee without clear proof that the ref is doing a bad job needlessly exposes you to the claim that you want a biased referee. The only way to save the situation is to demonstrate that the ref was doing a bad job.
"Why do they publishing numbers that they know are inaccurate? If you have to revise the numbers every time, why not wait to publish the numbers until you get more accurate information?"
Because it has always been a political operation masquerading as a scientific one. One has to be extremely naïve to believe otherwise. We would be much better off just publishing the numbers of people for whom payroll taxes are being remitted- a number that is extremely difficult to fake without getting called out on it.
"You are required to look at it and understand it."
"Understand" is not the right word for data that is kaka.
If I recall correctly, the pattern of labor statistics reports under Biden goes back even before McEntarfer took over last year. If there's diddling going on, it may be lower in the bureaucracy. Since she was a Biden appointee, she was going to go anyway. Why did it take so long?
I notice the press going to economists for comment, without noting that they were also Biden appointees who served with McEntarfer on Biden's Council of Economic Advisors.
Innumerate
You know, we've cut drug prices by 1200, 1300, 1400, 1,500%. I don't mean 50%. I mean 1400, 1,500% ~ Donald Trump
@Keldonric - "...but that’s out of a total workforce of about 159 million. That’s a -0.08% adjustment....."change in employment numbers - jobs added, jobs lost - is what is being reported, and the change in employment is what is being corrected, sometimes with suspect consistency that appears to be partisan in nature. If your point is, that the trending numbers are minuscule, then your argument should be that the statistic is meaningless to begin with, and therefore any corrections are equally meaningless. Is that what you mean to say?
Richard said...
“Why do they publishing numbers that they know are inaccurate? If you have to revise the numbers every time, why not wait to publish the numbers until you get more accurate information?”
That’s just crazy talk. If you do that and then post more accurate numbers again next month, then people will start to expect that as the standard.
Keldonric said...
"The June 2025 revision was -133,000 jobs — but that’s out of a total workforce of about 159 million. That’s a -0.08% adjustment."
I was going to fisk this math but Original Mike did it for me.
But: if 2000 people are murdered in Chicago this month, the correct comparison(s) are previous month(s), not the total population. Sheesh
Occam’s Razor and the data tells me that the government has a legacy system for employment statistics that the statisticians use every month in the same way, but it is inaccurate. It is useful for many purposes, but is not good enough for the media to blast out condemnation of policy based on it.
I have dealt with many lawyers over the decades, and if they see a number they like, they want to fix it as exact. That is why statisticians repeat confidence intervals over and over. If you want to tell the truth, over the past 13 months the employment figure as reported by this poll has not made a statistically significant change, all the numbers must be considered the same. But there can be use in inaccurate numbers if they are all you have.
I really don’t see any fraud here. I see a traditional system that employees repeat every month that is not good, so it gives funny results. If the claim is that a reported 150,000 jobs is good, and 77,000 jobs is bad, that is not justifiable, that is not true.
If people want a better number, they need to use a new procedure, I think the number is not useful due to method and not fraud. The only excuse for firing the leader is to enable improvement, and that assumes that the leader was not making improvements. Perhaps they don’t have enough people and they don’t have time to study improvements.
In defense of the fired official I will say this- the BLS increasingly has trouble getting people to respond to the survey every month- response rates have been falling for a long time. As a result, the monthly surveys are probably increasingly non-representative of the labor force as a whole. This leads to greater variance and corrections as more solid data is used to analyze the surveys at later dates.
And one last comment- the media truly sucks donkey dicks on this- the reports are always released with confidence intervals but the media almost 100% of the time just prints the headline value.
Firing a referee without clear proof that the ref is doing a bad job needlessly exposes you to the claim that you want a biased referee.
That's true, but the Commissioner is not a referee. Her job is not to enforce rules. She doesn't have authority over the President or his policies. Her job is to produce useful, reliable information. Has she been doing her job well? If her boss doesn't think so then he's entitled to put someone in there who will do a better job.
Maybe Trump intends to put in someone who will not produce reliable information, but will produce politicized information. Maybe not. Only time will tell.
In the mean time, it's mind-reading and projection to say you know that's Trump's intention.
Why in the fuck is ANYONE appointed by Joe Biden still working for the Federal Government?
Is Trump a fucking idiot?
FIRE. THEM. ALL.
"But there can be use in inaccurate numbers if they are all you have."
I would challenge this assertion.
"Was she even really appointed by Biden?"
She has the official George Soros' Son glasses (huge black-rimmed cartoon glasses) and the lesbian butch haircut, bro. Who do you think actually appointed her? I think I know.
Trump has once again lost the plot. The smarter move would have been to use the downward revision of the employment numbers to lobby the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.
I do wonder why McEntarfer was not replaced in January.
1. Did the Trump people keep her knowing they would need someone to fire for bad economic numbers later?
2. Did Elon Musk leave behind an Easter Egg?
Overheard at a trailhead:
"I brought this map."
"Is that even the right map?"
"No, but it's better than nothing."
We should also take into account that the supply of labor has shrunk by 200,000/month due to the new immigration policies.
Bob Boyd: Heh!
The BLS issues other reports on economic conditions. Does anyone here know if those reports have the same kinds of problems the jobs report has?
Weathermen are never fired.
Exactly.
I don't know enough about BLS and their methodology to pass an informed opinion as to their bias. I do, however, know enough about the NYT and their methodology to pass an informed opinion as to their bias......It's just very difficult to believe anything they report about Trump.....The market looks like it's recovering today. It certainly appears that the economy is in better shape under Trump than under Biden.
"We should also take into account that the supply of labor has shrunk by 200,000/month due to the new immigration policies."
Since the participation rate is in the low 60s a drop in illegal labor isn't something to worry about, Bich.
“ But there can be use in inaccurate numbers if they are all you have."
I would challenge this assertion”
Yes, and rightfully so. But there is some information in the poll, it is not zero. The old Talib idea, is it better to know only the truth, or to be somewhat guided by intuition and hints.
She works at the pleasure of the President. There is a body of records publicly available showing erratic job reports constantly revised. Many people have pointed this out and the errors made. The claim of “no evidence” requires ignorance.
"But there can be use in inaccurate numbers if they are all you have."
And I'm saying NO. Inaccurate numbers are not worthless, they're worse than worthless.
And, yes, she should have been fired on January 20th along with every other Biden and Obama appointee still beavering away in the executive branch. Trump did better this time than the first time but he clearly didn't do a clean sweep like he should have.
I brought up the 159 million total just for scale — and sure, a -133,000 revision is only about -0.08% of that. But the point of the CES isn't to measure the size of the workforce; it's to track changes in employment over time.
So I get the “murder rate” analogy — it’s not about population, it’s about change. Same here. A revision that size matters not because of the total denominator, but because we're watching for shifts in direction and momentum — like an AC signal, not the DC baseline.
That said, I think the topline number tends to get overstated in significance. The real value of CES is in the industry-level breakdowns — where jobs are gained or lost, not just how many. That’s where policy and economic decisions can be informed in a much more targeted way.
"But there can be use in inaccurate numbers if they are all you have."
I would challenge this assertion.
Agreed. The inaccurate numbers can be used for partisan purposes quite readily.
Let's stop using the euphemism "inaccurate". Errors this large deserve the descriptor "wrong".
Seems like a good idea to get someone in there who will figure out new ways to get better data.
ADP, as Steven noted, has historically had more reliable stats because their sample size is so large, but only includes private payroll. We still have to rely on GOV for GOV stats.
The jobs report bears all the classic earmarks of statistical information.
And, yes, she should have been fired on January 20th along with every other Biden and Obama appointee still beavering away in the executive branch. Trump did better this time than the first time but he clearly didn't do a clean sweep like he should have.
It is notoriously difficult to downsize the Federal workforce, as illustrated by recent litigation every step of the way as Trump has scaled back one agency after the other. Now he has been granted authority to break the Federal collective bargaining agreement, so you can expect the attrition so increase in velocity.
It really SHOULD be easy to walk in and sweep out all political appointees but many Bidenites have burrowed in. Look it up: "burrowing in." Millions of them added during Biden's short tenure.
Private payroll numbers from ADP would be better than this continuously revised horseschiff.
Public employment numbers should be negative numbers, if they’re doing what is necessary.
The Numbers(tm) are always adjusted - down. Why is that? If they are honest, why not wait until the 'real numbers' come in? Probably because there's manipulation going on.
One of the stimulants for the sarcastic “unexpectedly” posts on Instapundit has been the regular corrections of economic statistics that favor Democrats. The corrections rarely result in remedial coverage from the leftmedia. I think this qualifies as evidence although as with Obamagate it requires the media to admit their complicity.
The NYT won multiple Pulitzers for its reporting, without evidence, on Trump-Russia collusion
“ And I'm saying NO. Inaccurate numbers are not worthless, they're worse than worthless.”
Ok I’ll take the hit, but next time I am sailing my boat on the lake and I hear the wind is in the south I won’t really complain if it is really at azmuth 210 deg 23 min. Suitable for purpose is ok sometimes, we all want the highest precision accuracy if we can get it.
They're not just "collecting and organizing data", then summarizing it for publication like some of the BLS defenders would have you believe. They don't have the "actuals". If they did, they could explain the variances very clearly. They're doing a lot of surveying and extrapolating based on incomplete reporting. There's a ton of room in there for bias. I expect their processes have gaps and accountability is lacking.
What bad outcome(s) would result from not reporting monthly job numbers?
Kamala in a landslide. Oh, wait. Never mind.
Partisan gerrymandering, trends to make and influence perception, reception ars first-order forcings of [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate change in finely divided districts.
"Ok I’ll take the hit, but next time I am sailing my boat on the lake and I hear the wind is in the south I won’t really complain if it is really at azmuth 210 deg 23 min. "
A better analogy to the jobs number situation is the wind is really at azimuth 0 degrees. In that case, is the forecast of "in the south" still of some value or is it worse than worthless?
If you hired a private consulting firm to evaluate the data, and their results looked like this, would you fire them?
If not, why not?
I hear the wind is in the south I won’t really complain if it is really at azmuth 210 deg 23 min.
That statement makes me wonder if you understand the difference between accuracy and precision. The BLS numbers are grossly inaccurate, yet they have a precision usually to the nearest 10,000 despite not having an accuracy to justify that precision. For an ordinal direction of South, 30 degrees is quite accurate, even if you might prefer a precision of at least SW (or azimuth), as 30 degrees is closer to South than West or any other direction. The thing is, if you are piloting a ship of state, and the navigator keeps giving you the wrong direction and correcting it each month, eventually you might call them out.
If the numbers can be "revised," the numbers can be "rigged." By definition.
Introducing partisan bias into CES estimates would be extremely difficult. The process relies on stratified sampling, regression-weighted estimation, and periodic benchmarking to QCEW data — all transparent and replicable. Any systematic skew would be exposed over time through revisions and external comparisons. And even if manipulation somehow succeeded, reversing the distortion when the “other side” takes power — without detection — would be nearly impossible.
If there were a partisan thumb on the scale, you'd expect to see it in the industry-level revisions. But the patterns just don’t fit — some months revise construction up and government down, others the reverse. The inconsistencies don’t align with any ideological tilt. If there’s bias, it’s methodological, not political.
NYT finds "no evidence". And now your intrepid commentariat has provided the evidence the NYT ignores: her glasses!
Did you look at the glasses? It's pretty irrefutable.
From MSN:
"Nearly 90% of new job growth since early 2020 reportedly went to migrants. Of these, approximately 60% were illegal aliens."
Odd how no one mentioned that at the time.
Any time Trump cries and lies about "rigging" it's something true that he is very unhappy to see spoken of aloud or published in the media.
Erika McEntarfer. That name sounds like it came out of The National Lampoon.
If I hired a private firm to estimate national employment each month based on a 43% initial response rate — and their preliminary estimates consistently landed within 50–150k of the final benchmark — I’d consider that a strong outcome, especially given the scale of the task.
To be fair, revisions like June’s -133,000 aren’t trivial. Compared to the initial change estimate, they can represent a sizable swing. But remember: even that revision is a recalculation, not an observation — it’s still an estimate, just one based on more data.
The CES is optimized for speed and granularity. It’s not perfect, but it’s transparent, reproducible, and benchmarked annually to more complete counts. And it provides not just a topline figure, but rich industry-level detail that drives real-world decisions.
"And it provides not just a topline figure, but rich industry-level detail that drives real-world decisions." (emphasis added)
And therein lies the concern.
I'm not getting how if the topline figure is bad, how the industry-level detail is not.
I haven't done the work but there are several alternate sources for job growth that could be compared to BLS. I occasionaly look at the ADP employment report which shows 104,000 jobs in July, oddly just what "expectations" were.
Yes, this fascist regime is openly manipulating “news”
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” - And all that tommyrot but…….
now let’s get back to Donald J Trump protecting pedophiles by not releasing the Epstein docs.
"Without evidence" . The Joey crowd always says that.
Derek Guy (@dieworkwear) has just put a post on Twitter with a video from the owner of a US SME, Montana Knife Company, which produces hunting knives. The owner initially welcomed the tariffs, thinking it would hamper his foreign competitors. What he had not taken into account was that his inputs (e.g. the steel for his knives) will also be subject to tariffs. His business does not have a promising future. When business-owners and customers realize that Trump’s crazy tariff policy will cause a lot of pain for ordinary Americans.
What is interesting is that back in April, an eon ago, when stocks were tanking, Secretary Bessent said the whole point of the tariffs was to benefit Main Street not Wall Street. His view was the administration was focussed on Main Street not Wall Street. So I wonder what he will say now.
If the employment numbers aren't even necessarily directionally accurate, then it's probably best in the overall for Trump to do something like this if only to say to the public, "These numbers are not to be trusted." That this particular official is perhaps unfairly being scapegoated is unfortunate, but not reason enough for me to disapprove.
Yes, this fascist regime is openly manipulating “news”
Ahahahaha! Really? You wrote that?
There's still time to delete it.
The argument "Sure, the data's bad, but we need something. And this is fast!" reminds me of the old Dominos Pizza joke: "Sure the pizza's bad, but you get two!
Those of us in the industry have been scratching our heads over the statistical implausibility of the revisions for the past 18 months or so. Indicates statistical bias — a fundamental problem in data collection? BLS needs to do better.
she had one job, and she's terrible at it,
Well, if we really wanted to avoid modeling and imputation, Congress could mandate that every employer report to the CES — with significant penalties for noncompliance. That would certainly improve coverage. But it also means more red tape for businesses, more administrative burden for the government, and a political fight over enforcement. Until then, the current method — voluntary participation plus statistical estimation — is the compromise we live with.
Kevin Hasset is trying to soften the blow of a weaker economy while continuing to dance to Trump’s jig.
“After being reminded that the markets believed the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ substantial downward revisions of numbers for April and May, wiping out a huge portion of any jobs gains, Hassett was asked: “Do you think we are starting to see a real slowdown in the jobs market?
Rather than support Trump’s claim that “the numbers were phony,” “wrong,” and “rigged,” Hassett told CNBC, “Yeah, I think that the jobs numbers were slower than we expected.”
“I think that, like, one of the explanations for revisions is they have more complete data, and so I think it is likely that the revisions are a better read of the data if they’re not being manipulated, and so, yeah, I would say that it’s a little bit weaker.”
https://www.rawstory.com/newstop-trump-adviser-rejects-rigged-numbers-narrative/
Saw elsewhere a plot showing the extent of BLS revisions. This shows that deviations of the size the occured in July do occur occasionally, but that the average revision is near zero. There does not seem to be any dependence on whether the administration is Democrat or Republican. Here is the link.
https://x.com/VincentGeloso/status/1952115273332601030
how many strikes are they eligible for, like mulligans,
A former Trump appointed commissioner shedding some light on the revised jobs report…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-s-former-labor-statistics-chief-says-there-s-no-way-jobs-numbers-were-rigged/ar-AA1JSK5q
A former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics said there’s “no way” the jobs numbers could be “rigged” as President Donald Trump alleged during his shock shake-up of the agency.
“Trump-appointed William Beach criticized the president after hefired Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday.
Host Kasie Hunt said to Beach, “The president said that the BLS commissioner rigged these numbers. What do you think?”
“There’s no way for that to happen,” said Beach, who was replaced by McEntarfer in January 2024. “The commissioner doesn’t do anything to collect the numbers. The commissioner doesn’t see the numbers until Wednesday before they’re published. By the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they’re all prepared. They’re locked into the computer system. The only thing the commissioner does on Wednesday is to kind of do the edits on the text.”
Studies indicate that the agency’s data is more accurate than 20 or 30 years ago, Beach said. He added that he didn’t think “there’s any grounds at all for this firing” and that the move “undermines credibility in BLS.”
“Every year we’ve revised the numbers,” Beach said. “When I was commissioner, we had a 500,000 job revision during President Trump’s first term.”“
he was no good at his job either, why do we pay them again,
We should also take into account that the supply of labor has shrunk by 200,000/month due to the new immigration policies.
Good point, and the government vs. private sector and citizen vs. non-citizen immigrant breakdowns are also illuminating.
Citizens and the private sector are gaining many jobs. Non-citizen immigrants and government employees are losing them. Obviously this is greatly affected by Trump's newly imposed policies. So in a sense comparing the Biden and Trump labor markets is an apples-vs-oranges fool's game.
Wages will trend higher as the supply of cheap, docile labor dries up. I see the trend as unalloyed good news that lends support to my decision to vote for Trump again. There was a time when Democrats, especially those with strong labor union ties, would have agreed. But you know, orange man bad and all that....
If every early report has to be revised later, then stop issuing the early reports. supposedly some large portion has to be revised quite severely.
This could just be some non-partisan problem with data collection, but if so, I'd just stop releasing inaccurate early reporting. Who cares if you need to wait another 30 days to get the corrected data? Why would you want false early data?
they were certainly cooking the figures after the 'green new deal' was passed, by a considerable amount,
Ditto what Harun posted. Just wait until the actual numbers come in. Why do we need a surveyed result of less than half the contributors to come up with what has become a worthless estimate?
What he had not taken into account was that his inputs (e.g. the steel for his knives) will also be subject to tariffs.
At least in the case of custom knives, the cost of the steel is a fairly modest fraction of the overall price. Even blanks of high priced specialty products like Damasteel shouldn't be more than $50-75 for a knife that will sell for $400 or more. Exotic materials for the scales or handles can cost a lot more, and there is a LOT of labor that accounts for most of the cost.
As someone who does system design and business process reengineering for a living, I thought it might be useful to go to the BLS website to get an overview of their processes and data sources. I didn't need to go any further than the following brief extracts, in which I have highlighted the relevant terms in capital letters:
"The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects data on employment, payroll, and paid hours from a SAMPLE of establishments each month. By federal law, participation in the Current Employment Statistics (CES) SURVEY is VOLUNTARY…
Respondents submit monthly employment, hours, and earnings data from their payroll records to BLS by one of several transmission MODES…(CATI (phone), Web, and EDI (computer data))..."
So to summarize, these reports are based on incomplete sampling of data in survey format which is provided on a voluntary basis using multiple modes of transmission, for a multi-trillion dollar economy involving hundreds of millions of jobs.
Conclusion: Who the heck would be foolish enough to believe such methods could produce accurate, sufficiently reliable data on a timely basis? No fraud required, it's flawed by design. (But sure makes fraud a lot easier.)
The Fix: Monthly IRS-based (not BLS) legally-required (not voluntary) reporting from Payroll systems via standard EDI transmission. DOGE, do it.
I don't pay much attention to BLS stats, but various bloggers have been drawing attention to these numbers for the last year (Zerohedge in particular). The end of year adjustment for 2024 was an 800,000 jobs reduction. That after constant significant reductions for each month of the year. As many noted, if an organization's performance is as bad as BLS has been for at least the last year, you fire the boss and hire someone you think will do a better job. Perhaps one who will sponsor a redesign of the sampling method which is patently out of date.
I find it hilarious that these lefty commenters who slither in to make illogical and caustic comments think others give a rip what THEY think. These nitwits support the lawfare practicing, anti-American, HAMAS-supporting, shitbird Democrats.
How flipping deluded/insane must one be to think Democrats have an answer to anything!?!?
@planetgeo
It's an interesting idea—using IRS payroll data in place of CES survey data. But it raises a few questions worth considering:
Can IRS data provide the same level of industry detail? CES includes fine-grained breakouts (e.g., valve manufacturing vs. general machinery) that are vital for policy and analysis. Does IRS data go that deep?
What about hours and earnings? CES collects data on paid hours, overtime, and production vs. non-supervisory workers. Are those fields captured in IRS filings?
Can the timing match? CES is monthly, but IRS Form 941 is quarterly. Could we realistically require monthly filings from all employers?
Would reporting be standardized? CES has structured reporting protocols across industries and firm sizes. Could IRS filings be made consistent enough to support national statistics?
How would this affect revisions and benchmarking? CES is already benchmarked annually to more complete payroll data via the QCEW. Would we still need CES as a framework even with IRS integration?
Just questions—not dismissing the idea. But it's worth unpacking what problem we want to solve and whether a tax data system can fully meet those needs.
Iman - that.
We are coming off of 4 years of the worst pile of shit for a president this nation has ever endured.
Yo leftists - go f yourselves.
"But it's worth unpacking what problem we want to solve.."
What problem is the current jobs report supposed to be solving?
Keldronic,
I also doubt there is a lot of bias in the numbers for exactly the reasons you outline- reality eventually undoes you by not going away. With that out of the way, it is trivial to rig these numbers by putting pressure on the sample creation- you spend more time getting completed surveys from businesses that are shrinking and not so much pressure on getting them from growing businesses if you want so show slower job growth and vice versa if you want to show higher job growth.
And, of course, when you use modeling to fill in the gaps, you have a 4-lane highway for fraud which climate scientists have been driving on for 3 decades now.
I would prefer to use IRS data and report quarterly numbers rather than monthly. It really is only for political reasons we have the reporting system we have since there aren't really any policy reasons to have monthly rather than quarterly or even semi-annual numbers.
"What problem is the current jobs report supposed to be solving?"
That's a good question.
I found this a little disturbing: "CES includes fine-grained breakouts (e.g., valve manufacturing vs. general machinery) that are vital for policy and analysis."
What government policy needs this fine-grained data? The market may need this data, but that's what markets are for; develop that data and meet a need.
The monthly non-farm payroll job numbers are an estimate based on the establishment survey, which has approximately a +/- 130K sampling error for the month-on-month change in jobs, at the 90% confidence interval. May’s revision was within the sampling error and June was maybe just outside it, which statistically should happen 10% of the time. BTW these are still just estimates based on survey data, with inherent uncertainty, they are not actual numbers.
Trump wanted the story to be the sacking of the head of the agency, rather than the actual figures. And looking at the comments here, he succeeded.
But the important point is that the US economy is beginning to reflect the tariff uncertainty. Companies are not hiring, not investing and not spending given the uncertainty, and that can very easily tip the US economy into recession.
"We are coming off of 4 years of the worst pile of shit for a president this nation has ever endured."
Um...Trump's first term ended in 2020...four whole years ago. Biden's term was an improvement on Trump's first term. And Trump's first six months of his second term are worst than the whole of his first term.
"Biden's term was an improvement on Trump's first term. "
Well, if you like war, inflation, millions of unvetted, illegal immigrants, discrimination, a teetering energy grid, a lawless Intelligence community, (…what'd I miss?) I mean, sure.
Cook - stop lying to yourself. Really.
Yancey, I appreciate the reply.
I agree that any statistical system has vulnerabilities—sampling procedures, response weighting, and imputation methods all present opportunities for methodological bias. That’s why transparency and cross-validation matter. To their credit, the BLS publishes quite a bit about CES methodology and benchmarks to UI tax records annually, which helps keep the estimates grounded over time.
I also see the appeal of IRS data. The coverage is broad and based on actual payroll filings. But the tradeoff is timeliness and granularity—we’d lose the monthly industry-level insights CES offers. It’s one thing to know payrolls rose; it’s another to see where: hospitals vs. nursing care, automotive vs. aerospace. That kind of resolution matters for both public and private decision-making.
Maybe the better critique is that we ask CES to do things it wasn’t built for—like serve as a political weathervane based on one month’s preliminary estimate. That’s a problem of interpretation more than methodology.
As for climate science—that’s a whole other ball of wax.
Maybe we should just pass a law prohibiting the BLS from aggregating the topline number. You want data? Fine. You have to read the industry tables. lol
"Maybe we should just pass a law prohibiting the BLS from aggregating the topline number. You want data? Fine. You have to read the industry tables. lol"
Not to be a pest, but how are the industry numbers any more accurate? Isn't the topline number just a sum of the industry numbers? If the topline number is way off, it's a given that the industry numbers are too.
Really appreciate the thoughtful exchange — sharing what we know is how we all get better. I’ve been working with data in one form or another for over 25 years (not an economist, just curious), and it’s genuinely refreshing to see such level-headed and genial conversation in this thread. If I tried to geek out about this stuff with my wife, she’d be asleep in five minutes.
You’re absolutely right that if the topline number is off, then some of the industry-level numbers must be off too — the total is just their sum, after all. But that’s also why people look to the industry breakdown: not because it’s perfect, but because it helps identify where the problem might be.
Errors aren’t always evenly spread — some sectors rely more on modeling or have higher nonresponse, while others are grounded in better data. And the analysts who use this data seriously (not just for headlines) know that. They build revision patterns into their own models, combine CES figures with other datasets like UI claims, JOLTS, or ADP, and bring subject-matter expertise to bear. It’s like reading a full blood panel: a single number out of whack isn’t ignored — it’s contextualized.
Most of us won’t dig into it at that level, and that’s fair. But for people whose job is to understand labor dynamics, the industry detail isn’t just noise — it’s part of the signal.
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