Showing posts with label Bureau of Labor Statistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bureau of Labor Statistics. Show all posts

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Another Casualty of the War on Reality

Via 5 Calls Civic Action.

There's a hint of rationality in Trump's violent reaction to the July jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, when he accused the BLS of "rigging" the numbers in an attempt to harm him ("ME"), and abruptly fired the commissioner, Erika McEntarfer:


Though the history is virtually all fiction: the October 2024 jobs report, issued two days before the election on November 1, was dismal for the Democrats, counting just 12,000 new jobs for the month, effectively zero, and a downward revision of 112,000 jobs to the August and September numbers; there was no report issued on November 15 (it always comes out on the first Friday of the new month); and in the next report, issued on December 6, listed a gangbusters gain for November of 227,000 jobs and significant upward revisions of 56,000 for September and October—so if it was rigged to affect the presidential election it must have been rigged against the Harris campaign and in Trump's favor. (Of course it wasn't rigged at all.) The 818,000-job downward revision referred to in the "Truth" was announced in August 2024, well before the election, and covered the previous 12 months, so that would have favored Trump too. Has anybody but me bothered to check any of this out?