President Donald Trump fired the head of the US Labor Statistics Bureau (LBS) after the department revised recent workplace numbers by more than 250,000.
He says the numbers were “counterfeited” to make his administration “look bad.”
Although the recent revisions were larger than usual, it is normal for the original monthly number to be changed and this happens routinely in both democratic and Republican presidents.
How are work data collected?
BLS leader – known as a commissioner – does not play a role in data collection or assembling numbers, only interfere with to review the final press release before its publication, according to the former commissioners.
“My reaction was,” It couldn’t happen, “says Katarin Abraham, who was BLS Commissioner from 1993 to 2001, about Trump’s claims that the numbers had been forged.
“The commissioner has no control over what the numbers are,” she adds.
The BLS job report is based on two studies – one that collects data from about 60,000 households and another from 121,000 employers in the public and private sector.
President Trump defended the BLS shooting for what he says are “wrong” numbers [Getty Images]
Establishment evaluations come from the study of employers, often referred to as the study of creation. It tends to be considered more reliable than the household survey due to its large sample size.
The bigger part of the answers come from large companies, usually enrolled in a program that automatically provides their employment information. BLS staff also conducts web research and telephone interviews.
“Initial salary employment assessments are a preliminary look at what happened every month,” BBC told the BBC.
“This is a quick but collapsed photo of what happened in the labor market for a certain month. Since the processed estimates are based on more full data, they create a higher resolution picture -and sometimes the processed data give a different picture,” she added.
The desk updates the numbers during the two months after the initial monthly evaluation as more answers are in. It also recalculates the number annually to include data from the unemployment tax records.
“There are all these career people who also have the data, and if the commissioner tries to change the numbers that everyone would know and that would get out,” says Prof. Abraham.
How unusual are the latest revisions?
The numbers for May and June were revised by 125,000 and 133,000 respectively.
258,000 combined reduction for the total amount for the two -month period is the largest change since the beginning of the records, except for the months in 2020 after the outbreak of the Covid pandemic.
However, there are adjustments every month and major changes are not unprecedented.
In this case, many analysts have already expected revisions of June data, which showed an unusual growth in school employment during the month when most schools would close for the summer.
The short answers also disproportionately reflect the smaller companies, which are more vulnerable to changes in the economy, such as tariffs, analysts note.
The figure in May was largely adjusted in response to the June revision and is in line with other data showing delay.
[BBC]
In records that returned to 1979, the average monthly change in jobs (up or down) is 57,000, according to BLS.
But revisions tend to become more large during economic turmoil.
In addition to the most of the Covid numbers in 2020, there are eight other cases since 2000, when BLS reviews the monthly jobs of workplaces by more than 100,000 – most of them toured the 2008 financial crisis.
For example, there was a 143,000 decrease in the number in January 2009, when President Barack Obama was in office.
BLS also said that profits for work throughout the year in 2009 are 902,000 more low than the first revision of year -round revision is first calculated.
The works, created in 2024 with President Joe Biden, were revised by 598,000, although it was a less change than initially over 800,000 – an update that also caused political fall.
Prof. Abraham says the updates are part of the process and she was not surprised when she sees so much revisions for May and June, given the increased difficulties in collecting answers and the lack of investment in new methods – and the broader delay in the economy, partly led by partly new tariffs.
“It is always difficult when you are at a time when things can change and then add to the fact that the staff is limited and the agencies did not have resources to invest in tracking with respondents the way they can have in the past,” she says.
Were there any problems with data in the past?
The degree of response has fallen significantly over the last decade, accelerating after the pandemic, raising concerns about the reliability of the data.
For example, the rate of response to the assembly study was less than 43% in March, compared to over 60% decade earlier.
Other countries, including Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom, are struggling with similar falls. The degree of response to the workforce study has fallen to approximately 20% in the UK.
In the United States, dropping out some efforts to research new data collection methods, including web-based research.
But the meaning of the problem remains a matter of debate.
A review of researchers at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank in March this year found that revisions in recent years are mostly in accordance with models before papandemia, which he believes should be soothing for those who are worried about reliability.
[BBC]
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