This is what the BLS routinely does. After requesting job numbers from employers three times (some don’t report the first time), it updates its findings when new data comes in. “What you saw on August 8 was the effect of trying to do a better job,” said William Beach, former BLS commissioner appointed by Trump in his first term.
The final figures for the Biden-Harris administration saw a reduction of 818,000 fewer jobs than first reported. This was the largest downward revision in 15 years and neither Biden nor Harris objected to the changes. Nevertheless, at 15 million-plus, they created more jobs than Bush Jr., Obama and first-term Trump combined.
On Aug. 7, Trump held a news conference with his very own job numbers, and former BLS Commissioner William Beach charged that “every number on the chart was wrong.” The figures were “mathematically flawed” and it was “like counting the same apple twice and pretending you had two.”
Trump has nominated E.J. Antoni, the chief economist at the far-right Heritage Foundation and contributor to Project 2025, to become the next BLS commissioner. I will quote only the conservative opponents to Antoni’s appointment. Jessica Riedl, at the conservative Manhattan Institute, said his work is “probably the most error-filled of any think tank economist right now.”
Jeremy Horpedahl of the libertarian Cato Institute said that Antoni “either massively misunderstands labor market data, or he is willing to lie repeatedly about after being corrected by dozens of economists.” Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute, describes him as “utterly unqualified and as partisan as it gets.”
While Trump and Antoni can destroy the BLS, the ADP employment report is independent from the government and surveys 400,000 businesses each month. Its latest figures for May and June were even more dire, showing only a gain of 4,000 jobs for both months. The Daily Kos (Aug. 15) predicts that the “ADP reports are likely to become the most credible and least flattering reality check of Trump’s presidency.”
The former governments of Greece and Argentina are good examples of what happens when countries fudge their data. For years Greece was prevented from joining the Euro currency zone because its finance minister published false budget deficit figures. A government statistician who blew the whistle was threatened with criminal prosecution.
Back in 2013, after years of manipulating its data, Argentina lost credibility in world financial markets. The International Monetary Fund reprimanded Argentina’s government for failure to make “sufficient progress in improving the accuracy of its economic data.”
National Public Radio (Aug. 13) reported: “The cooked numbers in Argentina made it more difficult for the government to enact policies that could limit inflation, and citizens lost faith in the ability to trust the government data to inform major purchases.”
The Economist, the world standard for economic statistics, refused to publish Argentina’s data, and its editors accused President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of replacing “independent-minded staff” with her own people. This is exactly what Trump is doing now.
UI professor emeritus Gier returns, reluctantly, to write about Donald Trump, the greatest danger to our democratic republic. Read more at nfgier.com/?s=trump. Email him at ngier006@gmail.com.
Dining and Cooking