I & I Editorial BoardThe headlines on Friday were that the economy created 216,000 jobs, more than expected and a sign of continued strength in the economy.
“This morning’s report confirms that 2023 was a great year for American workers,” President Joe Biden said.
Hurray!
But wait a minute. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) previously reported that there were 157,087,000 “non-farm payroll” jobs in November. The number of these jobs in December, it now says, was 157,232,000.
That’s a gain of only 145,000.
So how did Biden manage to claim that the economy created 216,000 jobs in December?
Easy. All you have to do is cut the number of jobs in November by 71,000 and then measure December’s gain against that new, lower number.
Et voilà!
Instead of 157,087,000 jobs in November, the BLS now says there were 157,016,000. Subtract that from 157,232,000 and you get … 216,000!
Turns out, the BLS has been exaggerating job gains this way throughout 2023. But you’d never know that unless you dug into the data.
We looked at the BLS press releases each month in 2023, and compared the number of jobs it claimed had been created with its new “revised” numbers. Turns out, in every month but one the BLS initial number was wrong, often by wide margins and almost always to Biden’s benefit. It exaggerated the gains by 10% in January, 25% in February, 20% in May, 42% in October, and by nearly 100% in June. (See the chart below.)
And the press played along. Every month, headlines touted the strong job gains.
After the BLS said that 209,000 jobs were created in June, the press called it “latest evidence of economic strength.” Now the BLS says only 105,000 jobs had been created that month. What would the headlines have read if that had been the number?
The BLS initially claimed that the economy had created 199,000 jobs in November, and the press shouted that it was way above the 180,000 gain economists had expected.
Now the BLS says that just 173,000 jobs were created in November – less than economists had forecast.
We’re not saying that there’s something nefarious going on here or that the number crunchers at BLS are cooking the books to help Biden. The BLS is always revising its numbers as new data come in.
But as economist EJ Antoni said last summer, when this pattern first became obvious, “Every single month this year has seen its payroll numbers revised down. It’s difficult to stress how unusual this is as it’s so statistically unlikely. There is clearly something wrong with the estimations being done by President Joe Biden’s Department of Labor.”
Whatever the reason for the wild misses, the cumulative effect is to give the public a false impression about job growth in the country. So don’t be surprised if that big December number gets quietly cut in the months ahead.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Unleash Prosperity
You know, this is a very interesting and enlightening article. I read business news a lot (even though I’m retired now) and I had thought the labor stats of more unemployed working was due to more people having 2nd jobs and more government hirings (which also includes health service hirings, by the way)
But TIPP analyzed the data perfectly (I think). Compare the numbers working last quarter with the numbers working this quarter. To increase the number of workers working, just revise the previous quarter’s number down. That way you get more workers working this quarter.
It’s just terrible what the Biden Administation is doing to our stats-and we need stats as a map to see how we’re doing and where we’re going. Without reliable stat info, we wouldn’t know if we should veer off-or not-the course we’re taking.
Stats, under Biden, are now being used for political purposes. They don’t seem to be objective anymore, but rather are being manipulated to make Biden’s past decisions look better than they actually are.
There’s another danger: Gathering and displaying data is not an easy job. However, all the energies and time spent in the bureaucratic stat. Government organizations, are now being spent on making the Biden Administration look good. So in future Administrations, there is not going to be the same expertise at doing-what was once-a completely fair-minded economic statistical info gathering and data displaying activity.
The Biden Administration use of other stats (in assessing what their decision making should be, for instance, the numbers of border crossings by terrorists) is also going to be affected (and probably already has been). I’m pretty certain other social data has also been manipulated to show the Biden Administration in the best light.
Has this ever been done before? Let’s see, oh yes. I think the USSR (and now China and other communist nations) manipulate their data to make the current Administrations look good. This is called good politics-and it is dangerous to the process of objective and reliable data conducing to good governance.
It would be really useful if someone, anyone, would point out that a) the officially reported figures are seasonally adjusted; b) seasonalizing the data involves comparing monthly raw results (i.e., the BLS’s best estimate of *actual* results) to the same month in the previous five years and in the context of all monthly results in those five years to “normalize” reported results in that context; c) seasonalizing *generally* makes sense when there are clear seasonal patterns in those five years of raw data; d) there have NOT been clear seasonal patterns during the past five years primarily because of COVID and its aftermath; e) relying on seasonalized data only without looking at the underlying raw data, as virtually everyone does, is incomplete and I would argue irresponsible, especially during a period where seasonal patterns have been so disrupted.
Just one example: The raw data says that employment per the Household Survey (used to determine the unemployment rate) declined by 1.395 million in the month of December 2023 vs. an increase of 123,000 in Dec. 2022 (no December in the past 10 years has been worse than -590K). Dec. 2023 raw employment is only 13,000 jobs higher than March 2023 (vs. +766,000 during March-Dec. 2022). This is a troubling trend which is totally masked by seasonalizing the data while ignoring the raw reality.
I&I’s journalists are perfectly capable of explaining all of this to the public, and need to do so consistently.
If you want to identify when a DemonRat party member is lying, just look at their lips. If they are moving then they a lying.
It was such a great environment for the American worker, that with the abundance of jobs, the average American worker could take on several. Of course they had to in order to keep up with the inflation the Biden administration has given us.
Wait…whoa whoa whoa! The Regime and the Deep State have been lying to us?? I am shocked and appalled (well, appalled, anyway).