Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner, has been fired by President Donald Trump due to the weak jobs report. Trump accused the Biden-appointee of manipulating jobs data “for political purposes” and claimed the numbers were “rigged.”
McEntarfer was appointed as the Commissioner of Labor Statistics in January 2024, but the numbers were indeed rigged long ago. There should have been a serious shake-up at the BLS when the agency admitted it fabricated one-third of the newly created jobs in 2023.
At the time, the BLS claimed that conditions had changed too rapidly for them to calculate the number of jobs accurately. “By the time you include all the monthly revisions and the annual benchmark revision, about one-quarter of all the jobs we thought were added last year have been revised away,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF. “That pattern of consistent downward revisions has happened in two prior recessions. It is a result of market conditions changing too rapidly for the BLS to adjust its methodology, which in turn causes consistent errors in measuring nonfarm payrolls.”
The BLS has continually tailored its method for calculating employment. One of the key surveys used is the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is a monthly survey of households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the BLS. The unemployment rate is calculated as the number of unemployed individuals divided by the labor force, multiplied by 100. BLS creates occupational employment projections in a product called the National Employment Matrix, which describes the employment of detailed occupations within detailed wage and salary categories, including those who are self-employed or employed by a private household. The BLS also develops participation rate projections using data from the CPS conducted by the Census Bureau. So there is inaccurate data coming from multiple places.
In 2023, the agency made changes to its calculations, including the implementation of a new weight smoothing procedure for state and metropolitan area employment data. They have recalculated this figure for Q1 of 2024 and checked back to see if the numbers were where they wanted them to be.
The agency also claims its statistical calculations are subject to a widening difference between preliminary and final releases. They say that the 10 to 16-day range between data collection prevents businesses from accurately reporting, and many employers who pay monthly instead of biweekly miss the deadline entirely. The BLS stated that its average rate of collection begins at 68.3%, advances to 89% for the second publication, and rises to 92.8% by the third revision.
The BLS publishes the Business Employment Dynamics (BED) census as well on a quarterly basis. The sample size is 12 million or 17 times the size of the monthly nonfarm payrolls report. Now, the BLS also releases a quarterly census report on employment and wages. The BLS determines its annual benchmark by comparing these varying reports and reevaluating its monthly estimates. Every March, the BLS looks at the Current Employment Statistics, or CES, survey, and looks at administrative records of employees covered by Unemployment Insurance (UI). Around 97% of employment falls under the CES scope, and the remaining 3% is analyzed by looking at County Business Patterns or other sources like the Railroad Retirement Board. The March survey determines the “universe” count and adjusts the prior year’s monthly estimates, recalibrating the data to match the universe figure.
(August 2024 revision)
Why bother to release inaccurate data before the figure is beyond a passing grade? I explained in May that the BLS revised its data so significantly that it was forced to admit Bidenomics FAILED and the job market contracted under the Biden Administration, despite the agency claiming jobs were abundant. We live in an age where data collection is power—the United States government has the ability to track absolutely everyone and everything. Yet, they somehow drastically miss the mark when it comes to reporting on jobs. One person cannot be blamed for the gross inaccuracy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has become nothing more than a tool to manipulate public perception.
