NEC Director Kevin Hassett: The jobs data have become very unreliable
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Ali Velshi: The jobs numbers aren't ‘rigged.' Trump owns this economy.
This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 2 episode of 'Velshi.' On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released an alarming monthly employment report, exposing that the United States' job market is much more fragile than many had expected. Only 73,000 net new jobs — that's new jobs created, minus jobs lost — were added in July. But worse were the revisions to the two previous job reports. May's jobs report was revised from 144,000 jobs to only 19,000. June's 147,000 jobs were mostly a mirage, too; it turns out only 14,000 jobs were added that month. That's 258,000 fewer jobs than previously thought. The average for the last three months is 35,000, far fewer than the 150,000 or more needed for job growth to keep up with population growth in this country. Now, revisions to government statistics are normal in subsequent months. It's the nature of large numbers. They happen regularly, but they almost never show this dramatic a shift. It was a bad report, no doubt about it. It was particularly bad for a president who, in political terms, owns this job market and this economy, which has been roiled by the chaos of his tariffs and trade wars. But instead of addressing the numbers and the challenge they present, Donald Trump said they were fake and fired the head of the department that collects them. The president baselessly claimed the jobs numbers were 'rigged' and accused the fired commissioner of inflating numbers for the Biden administration and sabotaging them under his own administration. Trump baselessly claimed that jobs reports were overstated during the previous presidency to prop up Joe Biden and are now being underestimated to hurt Trump. The president has zeroed in on the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, labeling her a 'Biden appointee' and ignoring the fact that she was confirmed in the Senate by a bipartisan vote of 86-8, with six senators not voting. Among the 86 yeas was now-Vice President JD Vance. This is becoming a common refrain for Trump. He has also accused Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, of being a Biden appointee. But Trump is the one who elevated him to the position in 2017. Friday also marked the president's self-imposed, but often delayed, deadline for reaching trade deals with countries across the world. Back in April, Trump claimed he had already struck 200 deals, despite the fact that there aren't even 200 countries in the world. The number of deals before the Aug. 1 deadline was closer to eight, though you could arguably consider the European Union, which is a single trading bloc, as 27 countries. Deals were struck with the European Union, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, the United Kingdom and Vietnam, and talks are ongoing with Mexico and China. Nowhere close to 200. That was just a lie. An executive order signed by Trump late Thursday outlined tariff rates for 69 countries, including several changes from the rates announced on 'Liberation Day' in April. Smaller countries like Lesotho and Guyana were originally hit with massive tariffs, simply because they are poor countries that sell more to America than they buy and as a result have large trade deficits with America, but those rates have since been cut. The day before, Trump also jacked up tariffs on Brazil to 50% for what he views as the political persecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is on trial for attempting a coup in 2022. Trump has called that trial a 'witch hunt.' Forget a deal with one of the U.S.' oldest and biggest trading partners, Canada. The White House is upping the ante on our neighbor to the north, announcing a 35% tariff on Canadian goods, up from 25%. That's on goods not included in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. Plus, on Wednesday, the Commerce Department said gross domestic product, or GDP, which is the largest measure of economic activity we have, increased at a 3% annual rate in the second quarter. Some journalists jumped on that exciting top-line number, one that seems far more impressive than the first quarter's GDP increase of just 0.5%. But if some of those journalists had taken about 45 seconds to look under that shiny hood, they'd have found a far less impressive rebound than it initially seemed. Here's why: That upward swing in GDP growth came from a massive and fully expected decline in imports, after a massive and fully expected increase in imports in the first quarter in anticipation of tariffs. Lots of money left our economy to bring goods in before the first tariff deadlines in April, so when imports sharply dropped, the smaller resulting trade deficit boosted the GDP growth figure. But that's not so much evidence of economic prosperity as it is the result of a math equation and how GDP is calculated. This article was originally published on Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Why were US job numbers which riled Trump revised down by so much?
President Donald Trump has fired the head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after the department revised down recent job numbers by more than 250,000. He says the figures were "rigged" to make his administration "look bad". Although the latest revisions were bigger than usual, it is normal for the initial monthly number to be changed and it has happened routinely under both Democratic and Republican presidents. How are the job figures collected? The BLS head - known as the commissioner - plays no role in collecting the data or putting the numbers together, only stepping in to review the final press release before its published, according to former commissioners. "My reaction was, 'That couldn't happen,'" says Katharine Abraham, who served as BLS commissioner from 1993 to 2001, about Trump's claims that the numbers had been rigged. "The commissioner doesn't have control over what the numbers are," she adds. The jobs report from the BLS is based on two surveys – one that collects data from about 60,000 households and another from 121,000 public and private sector employers. The estimates of job gains come from the survey of employers, often referred to as the establishment survey. It tends to be considered more reliable than the household survey because of its large sample size. A majority of the responses come from large firms, typically enrolled in a programme that automatically submits their employment information. BLS staff also run web surveys and telephone interviews. "The initial estimates of payroll employment are a preliminary look at what occurred in each month," the BLS told BBC Verify. "It is the quick but lower-resolution snapshot of what went on in the job market for a particular month. Because the revised estimates are based on more complete data, they create a higher resolution picture - and occasionally the revised data produce a different picture," it added. The bureau updates the figures in the two months following the initial monthly estimate, as more responses come in. It also recalculates the numbers annually to incorporate data from unemployment insurance tax records. "There are all of these career people who also have the data and if the commissioner were to try to change the numbers they would all know and it would get out," Prof Abraham says. How unusual are the latest revisions? The figures for May and June have been revised down by 125,000 and 133,000 respectively. The 258,000 combined reduction total for the two month period represents the biggest change since records began, aside from the months in 2020 following the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. However, there are adjustments every month and large changes are not unprecedented. In this case, many analysts were already expecting revisions to the June figures, which had showed an unusual rise in school employment during a month when most schools were about to close for the summer. Later responses also disproportionately reflect smaller firms, which are more vulnerable to changes in the economy such as tariffs, analysts note. The May figure was adjusted down largely in response to the June revision and is consistent with other data showing a slowdown. In records going back to 1979, the average monthly change to the jobs figures (either up or down) is 57,000, according to the BLS. But revisions tend to get bigger during times of economic turmoil. Aside from the most recent numbers and the 2020 Covid period, there have been eight other occasions since 2000 when the BLS revised down monthly job numbers by more than 100,000 - with most of these coming around the 2008 financial crisis. For instance, there was a 143,000 reduction to the January 2009 figure when President Barack Obama was in office. The BLS also said job gains for the entire year in 2009 were 902,000 lower than it first estimated - the largest full-year revision on record. The jobs created in 2024 under President Joe Biden were revised down by 598,000, though that was a smaller change than the more than 800,000 initially estimated - an update which also caused political fallout. Prof Abraham says updates are part of the process and she was not surprised to see such large revisions for May and June, given increased difficulty of collecting responses and lack of investment in new methods - and the wider slowdown in the economy, driven in part by new tariffs. "It's always difficult when you're at a point where things may be changing and then you add to that the fact that staffing has been constrained and the agencies haven't had the resources to invest in following up with respondents the way they might have in the past," she says. Have there been problems with the data in the past? Response rates have dropped significantly over the last decade, accelerating after the pandemic, raising concerns about the reliability of the data. For example, the response rate for the establishment survey was less than 43% in March, compared with more than 60% a decade earlier. Other countries, including Canada, Sweden and the UK, have been wrestling with similar falls. Response rates to the labour force survey have fallen to roughly 20% in the UK. In the US, the drop-off has sparked some efforts to explore new methods of data collection, including web-based surveys. But the significance of the problem remains a matter of debate. A review by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in March of this year, found that revisions in recent years were mostly in line with pre-pandemic patterns, which it said should be reassuring to those worried about reliability. What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?
USA Today
15 minutes ago
- USA Today
Texas Democrats know they're fighting a losing cause. At least they're fighting.
This move by Democrats is performative at best. But it's one of the only things they've done to counteract President Trump's complete takeover of the government. Democrats in Texas are trying to represent the will of their constituents. To do so, they had to leave the state. On Aug. 4, the Texas Legislature was scheduled to vote on congressional redistricting that would turn five districts favoring Democrats to favor Republicans. To prevent the vote from happening, Democratic state legislators fled Texas, ensuring that the General Assembly would not have a quorum and thus making the vote impossible. 'We come here today with absolute moral clarity that this is absolutely the right thing to do to protect the people of the state of Texas,' state Rep. Gene Wu, the leader of the House Democratic Caucus, said at an Aug. 3 press conference in Chicago. Other legislators traveled to Albany, N.Y., and Boston. On one hand, this move by the Democrats is performative at best. Eventually, they will have to go back to Texas, and the new maps will be voted on. This doesn't mean it's a bad thing, though. It's one of the only things Democrats have done to counteract President Donald Trump's complete takeover of the government. Texas Democrats are pushing back on Republican antics This did not come out of nowhere – Trump specifically asked Republicans in the state to redraw the congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms to give their party an advantage through gerrymandering in the state's cities, which would give Democrats even less representation than they currently have. Gov. Greg Abbott had to call a special session to approve the maps. At the press conference, Wu pointed out that this decision is happening against the backdrop of historic flooding in central Texas in July that killed 135 people, including more than 35 children. Instead of focusing on disaster relief, Republicans are choosing to address the congressional maps. Republicans in Texas should be focused on helping their communities, not bending to the whims of the president. At the very least, redrawing districts could wait until after flooding has been addressed. While it was bold of Democrats to leave at such a perilous time, it's clear they're doing so because they feel it's the only option. Opinion: Republicans are afraid of Mamdani in New York. That's a good thing. Democrats know this is all for show. At least they're taking a stand. The Democrats are certainly getting the attention of their fellow Texas politicians. Abbott is so upset, he's threatening to remove the lawmakers from office if they do not return to the state to vote on the new maps. He also said the Democrats possibly committed felonies by fundraising for the $500 a day fines they're facing. 'Come and take it,' the Democrats replied. Opinion: What if I told you there's a Democrat who can still get the Republican vote? Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is also running for U.S. Senate, said he believes the runaway legislators should be 'found, arrested, and brought back to the Capitol immediately.' Dustin Burrows, a Republican and the Texas Speaker of the House, has said he's prepared to issue civil arrest warrants for the missing Democrats. Trump has not weighed in on the Democratic play, seeing as he's too busy firing the commissioner of Labor Statistics and weighing in on Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad. Ultimately, this act of protest will have to come to an end. Democrats will have to head back to Austin and vote on these maps, whether they like it or not. But at least they're doing something to sound the alarm on the president's meddling and Republican acquiescence. People have been souring on the Democrats as of late. A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that most Democrats see their party as 'weak' or 'ineffective.' It doesn't help that Democratic leadership is nowhere to be found nationwide. If anything, this act of protest will put attention back on the party and serve as a starting point for a stronger presence in predominantly red states ahead of the midterms. They're finally fighting back, even in a very red state like Texas. Follow USA TODAY columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter, @sara__pequeno
