BLS BS: Government's Numbers Racket Exposed
The federal government has been cooking the books for several years now. Finally a president is pushing back.
Regular readers of this newsletter and my op-eds in other publications are probably familiar with my criticisms of federal agencies’ reports of economic numbers, which became increasingly dubious during the Biden administration. President Donald Trump picked up that theme upon returning to the Oval Office earlier this year, and the discrepancies have gotten even worse, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) making a highly embarrassing admission last week.
The U.S. economy added only half as many jobs as the BLS had initially reported for the year leading up to this March, the biggest downward revision in history. The economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than the BLS reported during this critical period, which included a presidential election, with the continual large errors by the BLS just happening to make the incumbent president’s performance look far less awful than it really was.
The estimated job additions for the period in question averaged 147,000, of which 76,000 per month were fictional—more than half the reported total.
The overestimate of job growth since January 2022 was 2.8 million, the Unleash Prosperity Hotline reports:
The revisions show that the economy the Biden administration handed off to President Trump was in far worse shape than the false official numbers indicated, which had the political effect of creating higher expectations for the incoming administration than were justified, Heritage Foundation Acting Director of Economic Policy Studies Richard Stern told The Daily Signal:
“Notably, 10 of the 12 months encompassed by massive errors in this report fall under the Biden administration, casting a stark spotlight on the economic challenges and persistent headwinds inherited from the previous administration’s policies, which have profoundly impacted hardworking Americans,” Stern [said].
Government economic data influence government policy and affect a multitude of daily decisions by individuals and businesses. The numbers also have major political effects. The corruption of official data demonstrated by the BLS revision could have contributed to a change in last November’s election results. Perhaps they did, in House, Senate, and state races and in Trump’s victory margin. Since then, political effects have arisen from the inaccurate comparison between current economic performance and the false picture of last year’s economy that the government agencies promulgated.
This is a major scandal, and the BLS requires thorough reform.
Trump began that process by firing Commissioner Erika McEntarfer last month. “Sure seems like firing the commissioner was warranted,” tweeted Heritage Foundation Media and Public Relations Director Cody Sergeant. That is one assessment that will not be revised downward.