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"I voted for him because of the economy" - People I know
Also most of HN a few months ago
U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier
31–40 of 514 posts
Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier
#32[flagged]
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Regardless of which administration is in place, the BLS (USA) does adjust the numbers every month (for two months after the initial release) and annually. This is fairly common with statistics and forecasting in general.
Regardless if the numbers go up or down, regardless of the administration.
So, yes...the last administration did the same thing, and the administration before that, etc.
Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier
#33What I really fail to understand - how can departments like BLS screw up to this extent. Either they are grossly incompetent or they are intentionally corrupt. The data covers the period from March 2024 to March 2025 and trims the average monthly jobs gains seen during this period (roughly the last 10 months of Joe Biden's presidency and the first two months of Trump's) from a monthly average of 147,000 to about 71,0…
I feel like the IRS has near real time employment data simply based on tax withholding payments they receive every 2 to 4 weeks.
Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier
#34How does this compare with the ADP figures for the same time period?
Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier
#35What I really fail to understand - how can departments like BLS screw up to this extent. Either they are grossly incompetent or they are intentionally corrupt. The data covers the period from March 2024 to March 2025 and trims the average monthly jobs gains seen during this period (roughly the last 10 months of Joe Biden's presidency and the first two months of Trump's) from a monthly average of 147,000 to about 71,0…
> how can departments like BLS screw up to this extent
My null hypothesis might be that the BLS works for the government, so how can they not be under (implicit) pressure to goal-seek their figures.
Once the figure has been published, and widely reported, it can be revised downwards months later, few will care. The system may be broken by design.
Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier
#36What I really fail to understand - how can departments like BLS screw up to this extent. Either they are grossly incompetent or they are intentionally corrupt. The data covers the period from March 2024 to March 2025 and trims the average monthly jobs gains seen during this period (roughly the last 10 months of Joe Biden's presidency and the first two months of Trump's) from a monthly average of 147,000 to about 71,0…
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because they're asked to always have rosier numbers. They've done this forever.
Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier
#37What I really fail to understand - how can departments like BLS screw up to this extent. Either they are grossly incompetent or they are intentionally corrupt. The data covers the period from March 2024 to March 2025 and trims the average monthly jobs gains seen during this period (roughly the last 10 months of Joe Biden's presidency and the first two months of Trump's) from a monthly average of 147,000 to about 71,0…
It’s a survey, there are a lot of non-responses (getting worse) and late responses. They try to correct for this, and that normally works, but when “weird” things are going on the corrections can be pretty wrong. The people who use these numbers understand all of this and it’s fine. It’s just the popular media that freaks out.
The quarterly numbers come from better data sources (tax withholding, unemployment insurance payments, etc)
Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier
#38What I really fail to understand - how can departments like BLS screw up to this extent. Either they are grossly incompetent or they are intentionally corrupt. The data covers the period from March 2024 to March 2025 and trims the average monthly jobs gains seen during this period (roughly the last 10 months of Joe Biden's presidency and the first two months of Trump's) from a monthly average of 147,000 to about 71,0…
I feel like the IRS has near real time employment data simply based on tax withholding payments they receive every 2 to 4 weeks.
That comes out quarterly
Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier
#39What I really fail to understand - how can departments like BLS screw up to this extent. Either they are grossly incompetent or they are intentionally corrupt. The data covers the period from March 2024 to March 2025 and trims the average monthly jobs gains seen during this period (roughly the last 10 months of Joe Biden's presidency and the first two months of Trump's) from a monthly average of 147,000 to about 71,0…
There's a little bit of a philosophical thing here -- do you adjust the earlier measurement by some function because it's usually been high and revised downwards? If you do, you need to let every user know that you're doing something different, etc.
The worst case is that both the statistics orgs and the users are adjusting the numbers for a bias and overshooting.
This means there's a certain inertia: it can be better to handle the interim reports the same, even if they've been biased one way for several years, than to introduce a change that makes the numbers not comparable to history.
> 50% error.
It's not a 50% error; it's a 50% error in the magnitude of the change.
That's like saying that my room increased from 71.4 to 71.6 degrees, but my thermometer only saw an increase from 71.4 to 71.5; therefore, my thermostat has a 50% error.
Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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The last one fired the BLS head because he didn't like the jobs report? Now not only are we seeing major job loss, our statisticians are intimidated and likely are no longer reporting the truth. We now have to rely upon shittier metrics because our core numbers are worthless.
> no longer
Citation needed.
POTUSes come and go, BLS figures have been suspect for a long time.