Rebuilding Trust in the Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been on a rocky road for the last few years. After BLS head Erika McEntarfer released a jobs report that President Trump said was “rigged in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” the President fired her and picked economist EJ Antoni to succeed her. That presents a great opportunity to revamp the entire BLS and restore its reputation.
The BLS Jobs Report estimates the number of jobs the US economy grew or lost in a given month. BLS collects data on wages, the number of hours worked, inflation, and more, but it does so in an antiquated way. The Economics Policy Institute says that employment data are “incredibly difficult and complex to measure, and incredibly important for policymakers at the state and local level, the private sector in the U.S. and around the world.” While their importance is indisputable, there’s no reason to accept the contention that these data are so terribly difficult and complex to measure.
The BLS releases employment data monthly, and then issues revisions to those reports as more data become available. On August 1, it published a downward revision of May and June payroll growth by 258,000, which according to CBS News was the largest two-month downward revision to the jobs numbers since 1968.” It’s not surprising that President Trump thought those revisions were aimed at discrediting his handling of the economy, but the fact is that large revisions by the BLS are commonplace. Last year, during the Biden Administration, BLS revised down the benchmark payroll growth for the year ending in March 2024 by 818,000 jobs — the second-largest benchmark revision on record. In July 2024, it revised jobs added in May of that year down by 54,000 jobs, and the jobs added in April down by 57,000 jobs. In April 2024, BLS revised the jobs added in February of that year down — then further revised the number down the following month. In February 2024, BLS revised the jobs added in December of the prior year down by 43,000 jobs and the jobs added in January of that year down by 124,000 jobs. The initial releases were seen by many as helpful to the Harris campaign, and the downward revisions were seen as little-noticed late corrections to reflect reality.
Because the handling of the economy is often the single most important factor in deciding for whom to vote in Presidential elections, it’s understandable that the recent revisions are seen as politically-biased attempts to reflect well or poorly on a given Administration, but I suggest that the underlying issue is the methodology behind the gathering of data. The BLS uses a survey questionnaire sent to only 121,000 employers, and only about 70% of those complete it. That introduces a substantial statistical instability, to say nothing of the fact that using survey questionnaires as the basis of such an important report seems out of date in today’s world of electronic data collection. There are masses of data without names and private information available from taxing authorities and payroll processors, as just two examples. The revisions we’ve seen lately from the BLS are probably more the result of poor data collection methods than they are of intentional political bias. The BLS Jobs Report has become statistically unstable, and therefore unreliable.
With the appointment of EJ Antoni, a credentialed economist who has not spent a career at the BLS and thus is free of bureaucratic bias to defend the institution, this is a perfect opportunity to wipe the slate clean and develop an entirely new methodology for gathering and analyzing employment data. There is one absolute requirement, however: transparency. With so much data now available nearly instantaneously, the new BLS can fashion a Jobs Report that is beyond reproach ideologically and reliable statistically if it is completely above-board in how these data are collected and analyzed.
Listeners to American Radio Journal may remember Dr. Antoni from prior appearances on this show. Lowman Henry has interviewed him several times. He is technically sophisticated, and although he has worked for right-leaning institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, a completely transparent, completely new electronic data gathering system using as much so-called Big Data as possible can earn him the respect of his peers across the partisan spectrum and reestablish the reputation of the Burau of Labor Statistics.
An appointment that has been criticized as politicizing the office of BLS Commissioner may actually have the opposite effect if EJ Antoni seizes this opportunity and commits to improving the entire data gathering process. We wish Dr. Antoni the very best.
(Colin Hanna is President of Let Freedom Ring USA.)
