Trump Appointee Altering Jobs Report

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/11/16/government-underestimated-job-growth/

“We’re just improving the estimate using everything we know up through the month we’re releasing, really,” Clinton said. “I mean, it sounds counterintuitive to most people because revisions — they think, ‘Oh, they got it wrong the first time.’ But no, we got it right, based on what the sample told us. But going forward we receive more sample, some corrected records, and recalculate seasonal factors, which together may indicate a different story.”

““In the most recent four months with revisions, June through September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported it underestimated job growth by a cumulative 626,000 jobs — that’s the largest underestimate of any other comparable period, going back to 1979. If those revisions were themselves a jobs report, they’d be an absolute blockbuster,” the Post noted.”

“Revisions in the already calamitous months of March and April 2020,” under Trump, “found the economy had lost 922,000 more jobs than initially reported.”

Oops.

" As it turns out, William Beach – the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that since the start of the pandemic has been churning out wildly inaccurate (but very pro-Trump) numbers – was appointed by Donald Trump, used to work for a very pro-Trump think tank known as the Heritage Foundation, worked for a university research center that is funded by the very pro-Trump Charles Koch (as in the Koch Bros.), and also used to work for the Republicans on the the Senate Budget Committee.

(And while it’s unclear when Beach left Heritage, it’s important to know that right wing think tank is a purveyor of climate change denialism, fake critical race theory and voter fraud claims, and voter suppression legislation.)"