I'd love to see the evidence for or against this assertion. If BLS is grossly inaccurate, that'd be a good thing to know. If it's accurate, also good to know. Evidence?
He's not the final word on the matter, but Nate Silver writes...
> I've worked a lot with data produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other federal agencies. In fact, an economic index based on a half-dozen of these statistics is part of our presidential election forecast, so we’ve pulled this data all the way back to World War II.3
> And I consider it to be of very high quality. When BLS data is revised as more information becomes available, it’s meticulously documented and explained. For more on how this works, including just how difficult the BLS’s job is and how it’s being made harder by declining survey response rates and cuts to federal agencies that track economic activity, I’d strongly recommend this edition of the Odd Lots podcast with Bill Beach, the former BLS commissioner under Trump 1.0 and Biden. It might not be the most riveting interview, but one thing that comes through is just how much of a straight-shooter he is.
We can start with this reading. Average monthly job growth dropped from 147,000 initially to just over 70,000 a reduction of approximately 52% from their data. This at precisely when the Fed needed to start cuts when the administration has been aggressively hammering them. Hopefully the Fed is not too late this time, and their 6+ month delay cutting won't result in a recession or serious economic impact.
I expect they're correctly hesitant to cut rates at the same time as the president pursues inflationary policies, since that'd be courting stagflation, which was so bad last time it happened that it was one of the main factors that defined our politics for the following three decades.
You model about what the Fed does and how rates affect the economy is just wrong. The fed raising or lowering rates won't change what's happening with jobs. You have to explain why when the fed raised rates, the market shot up and unemployment dropped. But you can't with the model you have.
The fed was cutting rates and on track to continue until Trump threw a tariff grenade into the economy. They, like most businesses, decided they needed to see how the idiotic economic policy played out before doing anything else.
ForHackernews|5 months ago
> I've worked a lot with data produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other federal agencies. In fact, an economic index based on a half-dozen of these statistics is part of our presidential election forecast, so we’ve pulled this data all the way back to World War II.3
> And I consider it to be of very high quality. When BLS data is revised as more information becomes available, it’s meticulously documented and explained. For more on how this works, including just how difficult the BLS’s job is and how it’s being made harder by declining survey response rates and cuts to federal agencies that track economic activity, I’d strongly recommend this edition of the Odd Lots podcast with Bill Beach, the former BLS commissioner under Trump 1.0 and Biden. It might not be the most riveting interview, but one thing that comes through is just how much of a straight-shooter he is.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont...
nodesocket|5 months ago
yepitwas|5 months ago
blackbear_|5 months ago
That is well within the confidence intervals published along with the numbers and entirely unsurprising to anybody who is really paying attention.
> reduction of approximately 52% from their data
And of 0.04% of the actual number of employed people. Seems to me way too thin of a margin to get so worked up.
mempko|5 months ago
matwood|5 months ago