Are BLS' Jobs Numbers BS?
What's the point of economic data if it's constantly being revised?
By Peter List, Editor | May 14, 2024
Every month, to great aplomb, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its jobs report for the prior month. Then, as if on cue, administration officials and media pundits roll out talking points on how great the jobs market is. Stocks on Wall Street then rise or fall based on those numbers, and White House spokespeople typically applaud how President Biden’s policies are working for workers
But what if it’s all illusory? What if the numbers paraded across the nation, proclaiming a robust job market, are not just a little off, but consistently wrong, month after month?
That is the issue that was raised last Friday by FX Street in an article entitled: Biden's bureau of labor statistics is cooking jobs reports
Last Friday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics employment report showed that U.S. employers added some 175,000 jobs in April.
But while April’s numbers captured most of the headlines, the same jobs report also contained downward revisions for earlier this year, with the BLS admitting that “employment in February and March combined is 22,000 lower than previously reported.”
Close observers have noted that the BLS has revised its jobs numbers downward nearly every month since President Joe Biden has been in office. In other words, BLS has been releasing rosy jobs reports, only to quietly update the reports later with more accurate and dismal statistics. [Emphasis added.]
Remarkably, when one adds up all the revisions posted below, one comes to about 730,000 jobs that have been quietly revised downward since January 2023.
To be clear, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been revising its monthly job numbers for quite some time, and tens of thousands here or there may not make much of a difference on a monthly basis. However, unlike in prior years, it appears that the revised job numbers only go in one direction.
