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What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

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Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#391

Post by kasey_junk »

asdff wrote: post #388
gruez wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.faq.htm It also specifically says unemployment figures isn't solely from state unemployment insurance figures.

I see, so they don't capture that data well as they admit. household survey has a high margin of error. You have to also consider signal to noise ratio of some of these data and whether the survey even has the power to detect the signal. My grad school cohort for example was 15 people for the entire department. That is about as large as they get for PhD in most STEM fields. What are the odds this sort of employment s…

This is perhaps the most well studied and validated data set that any government has ever produced. Their methodology and techniques are documented to the nth degree. "they" will admit whatever you want them to admit because they are stone cold professionals that are scrutinized by every political hack in the country and their datasets are poured over by teams of financial analysts across the globe every time they are released.

You are an internet commenter that couldn't be bothered to read the summary of the article outlining some of the issues with their data collection, where the very first bullet point summary mentions its survey based. Perhaps you shouldn't try to argue from first principles without reading the _extensive_ documentation of methods and reports the BLS puts out. Lots of us have.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#392

Post by gwerbin »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #338
gwerbin wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of the manufacturing consent propaganda model is that you don't need some vast conspiracy, you just need industry consolidation and the leaders of those consolidated industries to either be willingly part of the conspiracy, or under pressure/threat. And just look how consolidated the media is in the USA right now, and look at who makes decisions for those companies. > Fox News and Shadowstats don’t wh…

> you just need industry consolidation and the leaders of those consolidated industries to either be willingly part of the conspiracy, or under pressure/threat And I’m saying that’s nonsense. The media operates on independent incentives. The political calculus then responds to it. Attention-driven society doesn’t need a maestro, and rarely has one. Pretending it does is comforting but wrong.

You claim it's nonsense, I claim it's been the reality in the United States for decades, and only becoming more true every year. You can choose to confront the evidence before you, or continue to live in willful ignorance, but the world you describe simply does not correspond to the one that we inhabit.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#393

Post by righthand »

mattmaroon wrote: post #313
righthand wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont hate my country, just a few electeds running it. I do not spend time on social media and I read a variety of news sources. I’m not really sure what your point is other than to label everything propaganda that sounds negative. I can’t be unhappy with aspects of my country and express it otherwise I’m some kind of robot to propaganda. I’m not sure about you but I have organized people for protests and participat…

Yes it is best to stop here, you’re reading things into what I’m saying that aren’t there. Every response completely misses my point. I hope you figure it out.

Same to you.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#394

Post by squibonpig »

mlrtime wrote: post #371
tootie wrote: post #165

The article says: US Government surveys are suffering from poor response rates and decreasing budgets so business leaders will have to explore other options to improve reliability. This thread says: American Empire is dying and the world is a fraud. Are all of you bots? Is apocalyptic cynicism this widespread? Fact is that most of the world already gets by with a fraction of the economic data we produce. We have enjo…

[flagged]

Do you like Trump and why?

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#395

Post by _heimdall »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #390
_heimdall wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the shift to a new methodology bias the estimates to one end? I would expect a new methodology to make comparisons of data between the two systems to potentially be unhelpful, but I wouldn't expect a valid methodology to bias one way or another. Related, I wouldn't expect past data to bias a current estimate. If 6 or 12 months of positive growth biases the next prediction it falls into the hot hands fallacy…

> If 6 or 12 months of positive growth biases the next prediction it falls into the hot hands fallacy It’s a sample of a sample. The full sample is the final release. The early results are the preliminary releases. When firms change things they take longer to respond. So whichever way the economy is moving, there will be bias in that direction. If the economy is turning, you won’t know direction. If it’s accelerating…

We agree here, and I am going a step further saying that the initial numbers are useless and are little more than throwing opinionated darts. Numbers shouldn't be released until they meet some reasonable level of response and statistical validity. Given that they do release numbers today, I judge them as early and either inaccurate and useless or politically motivated to push markets while there's no meaningful data to contradict them.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#396

Post by JumpCrisscross »

_heimdall wrote: post #395
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If 6 or 12 months of positive growth biases the next prediction it falls into the hot hands fallacy It’s a sample of a sample. The full sample is the final release. The early results are the preliminary releases. When firms change things they take longer to respond. So whichever way the economy is moving, there will be bias in that direction. If the economy is turning, you won’t know direction. If it’s accelerating…

We agree here, and I am going a step further saying that the initial numbers are useless and are little more than throwing opinionated darts. Numbers shouldn't be released until they meet some reasonable level of response and statistical validity. Given that they do release numbers today, I judge them as early and either inaccurate and useless or politically motivated to push markets while there's no meaningful data…

> the initial numbers are useless and are little more than throwing opinionated darts

You’re still concluding from ignorance. They are not. A better question would be ask to whom they’re useful and how.

Like, if a fire is burning in a neighborhood, every sighting is valuable. You don’t always need to wait for a comprehensive picture before being able to do anything.

> I judge them as early and either inaccurate and useless or politically motivated to push markets while there's no meaningful data to contradict them

That’s wrong. But it seems to be a common error.

Maybe the solution is to make these numbers available only to gatekeep these numbers. Policymakers, academics, enterprises and banks can get a rarefied sheet for a fee. But the public doesn’t get PDFs, much less public reporting.

> while there's no meaningful data to contradict them

There are bajillions of them. ADP. State reports. Private surveys. Fed studies. That said, I’m leaning towards your view—maybe these data aren’t best made broadly public.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#397

Post by JumpCrisscross »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #354
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you just need industry consolidation and the leaders of those consolidated industries to either be willingly part of the conspiracy, or under pressure/threat And I’m saying that’s nonsense. The media operates on independent incentives. The political calculus then responds to it. Attention-driven society doesn’t need a maestro, and rarely has one. Pretending it does is comforting but wrong.

You’re arguing against the evidence that is mounting that there are coordinated campaigns to influence public opinion to be more sympathetic to reactionary ideology. It’s been a century since Bernays wrote the seminary work on this topic, why the credulity? The connections are not tenuous, these people are operating in the daylight, even giving public talks and publishing treatises about their strategies. Personally,…

> the evidence that is mounting that there are coordinated campaigns to influence public opinion to be more sympathetic to reactionary ideology

And there are numerous counter narratives that find fertile bases, e.g. Chomsky on Reddit. Most of these speakers are doing so not with one arm in policy and the other in media, but to compete in the attention economy.

> Megachurch Pastors are billionaires, the Mormon church has one of the largest private investment funds, Scientology has a death grip on its members, etc etc.

And billions of dollars in influencers, interest groups and activists. Elon Musk is singularly as wealthy as the Mormon Church. Art and music narratives.

It’s comforting to assume a lizard man is in charge behind it all. The facts don’t sustain that false comfort. There are cohesive opinion blocks. One of them is the one convinced to the point of faith in Chomsky’s hypothesis. But they compete and fracture and ally and fall. Missing that dynamic significantly handicaps any operational political theory.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#398

Post by reddozen »

bmitch3020 wrote: post #257

It's sad how counter productive the unreliable economic data is. The people buying groceries know that things are more expensive. And the people looking for a job know how hard it is to find work. But this administration wants to say everything is fine, and fires those that say otherwise. So now unemployment seems under control even though it's not great. Now the Fed, with their dual mandate to maintain a healthy lab…

> The people buying groceries know that things are more expensive.

This isn't born out in polling data. Grocery store prices went from being all anyone talked about to magically solved January 20, 2025. If only Biden had pressed the magic "solve inflation" button

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#399

Post by rkuykendall-com »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #263
malfist wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. Just fox news screams about the "true unemployment" U6 number when Democratics are in charge and then go back to reporting on U3 when a Republican is in office. That said, measurement is not as easy today with so many gig workers. Government data is often driven by proxies because its too hard to measure directly and the number of people getting an llc for their uber/doordash/lyft/etc job is throwing off our m…

> Just fox news screams about the "true unemployment" U6 number when Democratics are in charge and then go back to reporting on U3 when a Republican is in office. To be fair, CNN and MSNBC do the same in reverse.

CNN and MSNBC are not propaganda networks in the way that Fox is.

Re: What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable

#400

Post by _heimdall »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #396
_heimdall wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We agree here, and I am going a step further saying that the initial numbers are useless and are little more than throwing opinionated darts. Numbers shouldn't be released until they meet some reasonable level of response and statistical validity. Given that they do release numbers today, I judge them as early and either inaccurate and useless or politically motivated to push markets while there's no meaningful data…

> the initial numbers are useless and are little more than throwing opinionated darts You’re still concluding from ignorance. They are not. A better question would be ask to whom they’re useful and how. Like, if a fire is burning in a neighborhood, every sighting is valuable. You don’t always need to wait for a comprehensive picture before being able to do anything. > I judge them as early and either inaccurate and u…

> Like, if a fire is burning in a neighborhood, every sighting is valuable. You don’t always need to wait for a comprehensive picture before being able to do anything.

That assumes there are a meaningful number of reliable reports. If I regularly am told there is a fire only to have authorities come back a week later to adjust reports down I wouldn't trust them. If they over estimated the number of fires based on the last 6-12 months of fire data, with little recent data to go on otherwise, I would ignore the reports.

> Maybe the solution is to make these numbers available only to gatekeep these numbers.

This seems more reasonable at least, though I don't see much use in the data still when its released so early that its based primarily on recent historic trends and few survey responses.

> There are bajillions of them.

Those are all anecdotal in this case. If said sources were applicable and reliable the official data would consider those and have more accurate reporting. My point was that said reports depend on survey results, and when they report early results so early that few responses are in yet them there is no official data to contradict the early reporting.

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