The day the economic-statistics numbers died: dementia-addled chaos-monkey Trump’s assault on statistical independence. A political purge of America’s economic thermometer is not good. Especially...
My fall semester starts three weeks from Monday, including a section of intro macro.
I've recently increased the emphasis I place on the government's role in providing various public goods, from infrastructure to the kind of information produced by the BLS.
I don't want to accuse Our Host of naïveté, but this move is a rational one in the authoritarian playbook. It's not at all addled, by fascist lights. It's all of a piece with the news item this week that Trump is planning to interview all people up from promotion to senior general post--presumably after Hegseth has vetted for gender and color.
This is from Bloomberg: Hiring in the health care and social assistance sector — the main engine of job growth in the US over the last few years — actually picked up last month. Without health care, the last three months of payroll gains look like this: -53,000 in May, -45,000 in June and -300 in July.
Lots of these jobs are not high paying or manufacturing!!!!!
Is there a private agency who is really and willing to take the place of the BLS? Businesses depend on the BLS data to plan and react to the market. The private agency will charge a fee depending on the wealth of the buyer? Will it, for a price, give your competitor false data?
Sounds like a business opportunity!!!
Will the president attack it if it does not produce the "right" Good TV numbers?
As a surgical pathologist with a deep knowledge of neurobiology (wow, self-qualification), i suggest trump has late onset frontotemporal dementia, wirh impaired executive function and garbeled speech. His speaking has become more delusional and fantastical of late. His father had dementia, NOS.
Y'all like to scoff at Trumpian keyword allusions to something that once entered his ear. Realize though that it's possible that sometimes you will turn out to be wrong.
Economists should collaborate to gather data from sources other than BLS and see what the correlations are with past data.
There are many, many sources of data: help wanted ads, press releases, unemployment applications, web searches for jobs, number of applicants per job announcement, etc.
Be creative. Think of other data, and data sources.
My fall semester starts three weeks from Monday, including a section of intro macro.
I've recently increased the emphasis I place on the government's role in providing various public goods, from infrastructure to the kind of information produced by the BLS.
Here's a depressing teachable moment.
I don't want to accuse Our Host of naïveté, but this move is a rational one in the authoritarian playbook. It's not at all addled, by fascist lights. It's all of a piece with the news item this week that Trump is planning to interview all people up from promotion to senior general post--presumably after Hegseth has vetted for gender and color.
This is from Bloomberg: Hiring in the health care and social assistance sector — the main engine of job growth in the US over the last few years — actually picked up last month. Without health care, the last three months of payroll gains look like this: -53,000 in May, -45,000 in June and -300 in July.
Lots of these jobs are not high paying or manufacturing!!!!!
I posted this at Krugman's place:
Is there a private agency who is really and willing to take the place of the BLS? Businesses depend on the BLS data to plan and react to the market. The private agency will charge a fee depending on the wealth of the buyer? Will it, for a price, give your competitor false data?
Sounds like a business opportunity!!!
Will the president attack it if it does not produce the "right" Good TV numbers?
Like
Reply
None of this is surprising. (c.f. Krugman 1/10/25) but the interesting question is WTF actually happened?
Is this massive a downward adjustment mean:
1) simple normal nothing to see here ?
2) DOGE chaos induced error ?
3) Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics? i.e. They couldn't keep lying about how good things were?
4) Some pervert hit the wrong key and released the "pre-analysis" real numbers?
There is a real entrepreneurial opportunity here to amass all the private survey and produce a "correction to the BLS" numbers. Kind of like the Poll
He's having his submonkeys erase stuff at Smithsonian, too.
I'm a life-long Democrat, but have to mention LBJ's lies re Vietnam. Allen Kamp
As a surgical pathologist with a deep knowledge of neurobiology (wow, self-qualification), i suggest trump has late onset frontotemporal dementia, wirh impaired executive function and garbeled speech. His speaking has become more delusional and fantastical of late. His father had dementia, NOS.
Y'all like to scoff at Trumpian keyword allusions to something that once entered his ear. Realize though that it's possible that sometimes you will turn out to be wrong.
Economists should collaborate to gather data from sources other than BLS and see what the correlations are with past data.
There are many, many sources of data: help wanted ads, press releases, unemployment applications, web searches for jobs, number of applicants per job announcement, etc.
Be creative. Think of other data, and data sources.