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Government Statistics: Trump fires labor statistics chief after weaker than expected jobs report
Week by week and day by day,,,, all norms are being destroyed….the unique combination of laws, transparency, separation of powers and no king/ despot ,,,, that made businesses thrive in the United States are being shattered. All because so many would follow a mad moron because he makes racism, sexism and xenophobia acceptable.
He would probably like to do something about the Institute For Supply Management after their latest report. Per Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. manufacturing contracted for a fifth straight month in July and factory employment dropped to the lowest level in five years amid tariffs that have raised prices of imported raw materials.
The Orange Idiot doesn't understand how government works. Revisions are not 'fraud' or 'tampering' .... but that's all his little peabrain seems to fathom, so of course it must be 'fraud' designed to make him look bad,
Immature, narcissistic, insecure, pathological, antisocial. And utterly ignorant about anything except what he wants for himself.
As expected cult members are vigorously defending the firing saying there must be something wrong with the numbers. The glorious leader can not be wrong, it is forbidden.
The choices are to either wait until all the data is collected and properly verified, then release it months later. Or offer preliminary data, then apply revisions as the data is finalized. Three month old data may well be useless. Preliminary data can be subject to contrary revision. Pick your poison.
Anyone who is okay with firing people for failing to serve a predetermined, false narrative, is making sandwiches with the bread on the inside.
I also think that the private sector data/numbers will become more trusted. Investors will not be misled so easily. This could also backfire, when even positive true/real government numbers are viewed with skepticism.
Hi @Old_Joe The below is a very good overview. The report is widely followed, and the data is announced and discussed at/on Bloomberg and CNBC tv business programs, and others.
ADP report The ADP National Employment Report (also known as the ADP Report) is a monthly report that provides an independent measure of the US labor market's private sector. Here's a breakdown of the key information about the ADP report: 1. What it is The ADP National Employment Report measures the change in US private-sector employment and pay, according to PR Newswire. It's based on anonymized payroll data collected from over 25 million private-sector employees across the US. It's produced by the ADP Research Institute in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. 2. What it shows The report provides insights into overall private sector job gains and losses, pay growth, and sectoral employment trends. It details the change in total private employment for the current month and weekly job data from the previous month. The report includes a sectoral breakdown of employment changes by industry, allowing for detailed understanding of which sectors are growing or contracting. It also categorizes employment changes by business size (small, medium, large) to highlight trends within different-sized companies. The report also includes data on pay trends, specifically focusing on year-over-year pay growth for both job-stayers and job-changers. 3. Why it's important Labor Market Indicator: It offers a timely and representative picture of the private sector, a crucial segment of the US economy. Predictive Value: The report is released before the more comprehensive Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Situation Report, often serving as a leading indicator for predicting the BLS numbers. Sectoral Insights: The detailed breakdown by industry helps understand specific sector performance and trends. Economic Forecasting: The job and pay data are used by economists and market analysts for economic forecasting, influencing expectations for consumer spending, business investment, and overall economic growth. Informs Business Strategy: The report helps companies understand labor market conditions, manage risk, and make workforce decisions, such as retention or layoff strategies. 4. Key recent findings (July 2025 report) Private employers added 104,000 jobs in July, which was higher than the expected 77,000 addition and the largest monthly gain since March. Hiring gains were primarily driven by the services sector, which added 74,000 jobs, particularly in leisure/hospitality and financial activities. However, the education and health sector experienced a net loss of jobs, continuing a negative trend for the year. Year-over-year pay growth remained relatively stable, with a 4.4% increase for job-stayers and a 7% increase for job-changers. 5. Next release The August 2025 ADP National Employment Report is scheduled for release on September 4, 2025, at 8:15 a.m. ET. In essence, the ADP report offers valuable insights into the health and dynamics of the US private sector labor market, acting as an important tool for businesses, investors, and policymakers alike.
The BLS surveys approximately 121,000 businesses and government agencies each month for the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program. The response rate for this program has plummeted since shortly after Covid was discovered in America. The BLS has less data to work with now. https://www.bls.gov/osmr/response-rates/
It is interesting that people defending DJT running ram shod over dedicated public servants want us to believe the BLS is like a public corporation which produces earnings and profit statements from their own data. Therefore the fact that numbers were revised is indicative of incompetence.
Leaving aside the fact that many COFs cook the books to present the most favorable set of numbers they can to please the boss and the market, a simple search would tell you how different these two roles are.
Well going forward maybe they will not be very different, as the new BLS will be hired to cook the books.
The estimate of employment change is based on a monthly survey of about 560,000 worksites, selected to represent the millions of businesses throughout the country. (For simplicity, we will refer to worksites as businesses even though many individual businesses provide data for multiple worksites.) In the survey sample, businesses report the total number of people who worked or received pay during the pay period that includes the 12th of the month. Although BLS uses a variety of methods to gather these reports as quickly as possible, many businesses do not have their payroll data ready to report by the scheduled date that BLS initially releases the data. In 2012, for example, the average collection rate at the time of the initial release was 73.1 percent.
The initial estimate of job change for a month is based on the growth or loss of jobs at the businesses that have reported their data. Generally, BLS assumes that the employment situation at businesses that had reported is representative of the situation at those that had not yet reported. BLS continues to collect outstanding reports from the businesses in the sample as it prepares a second and then a third estimate for the month. With each subsequent estimate, more businesses have provided their information. In 2012, the average collection rate at the time of the third estimate for a month was 94.6 percent.
DOGE cuts to BLS had nothing to do with these revisions, of course!!
"The Consumer Price Index is more than just the most widely used inflation gauge and a measurement of Americans’ purchasing power.
However, this gold standard piece of economic data has become a little less precise recently: The Bureau of Labor Statistics posted a notice on Wednesday stating that it stopped collecting data in three not-so-small cities (Lincoln, Nebraska; Buffalo, New York; and Provo, Utah) and increased “imputations” for certain items (a statistical technique that, when boiled down to very rough terms, essentially means more educated guesses).
The BLS notice states that the collection reductions “may increase the volatility of subnational or item-specific indexes” and are expected to have “minimal impact” on the overall index. "
When the CDC reports increases in Cancer incidence and mortality, those officials will be fired, also. Florida under DeSantis, fired the public health officials responsible for Covid statistics when he didn't like the trends and numbers.
People who do not see how this will affect the economy, prices and our longevity are deluding themselves.
"It should also be noted that the BLS compiles inflation as well as employment data, so, moving forward, significant doubt could surround the credibility of the two most important economic indicators for the U.S. - and perhaps the world."
William Beach, the prior BLS commissioner, was nominated by President Trump back in 2017. Mr. Beach suggests that data from "state and local education units" may be the cause for large revisions in May/June.
“We got some information from people, from businesses, and we think it was state and local education units, that was quite different than the first set of data points. Does this mean the economy is slowing down or does it just mean that we're having a problem in a particular sector of the economy, in this case, state and local education, which is very important, by the way, to the job estimates?”
“That remains to be seen. But the point is, the revisions were made because there was more information. Now, they were big revisions, absolutely, no question about that. And not too many of those big revisions occur, though many did under my tenure because I was the commissioner during COVID, totally different reasons why the revisions were big.”
@JD…. This should be of particular interest to anyone who waits eagerly for the Social Security COLA. A fake near Zero CPI print coming from the TBLS would zero out your COLA. Don’t think it could happen?
@ Observant: Thanks for bringing up that Beach interview. I'd like to know the details of the "state and local education" problems. The AI on Duck-Duck answers the question this way:
The revisions in the jobs report indicated that state and local education job gains were lower than previously reported, primarily due to reduced hiring as pandemic-era government subsidies expired. This led to significant job cuts in education, reflecting a broader trend of declining employment in that sector.
On March 28th of this year, the Education Department abruptly cancelled extensions it previously granted which allowed states/schools additional time to spend COVID relief funds. Although I can't draw a definitive conclusion, it seems plausible that losing ESSER funding could have caused significant job losses in the state/local education sector.
“McMahon said in her letter to state schools chiefs that it would now consider extensions 'on an individual project-specific basis.' It asked states to submit a statement explaining why an extension is 'necessary to mitigate the effects of COVID on American students’ education' and 'why the Department should exercise its discretion to grant your request.'”
“If the employers replying late happen to give different information from the first batch, as happened this summer, big revisions are likely. For example, Friday’s data showed that in May and June, there were about 109,000 fewer jobs for educators at state and local governments than previously thought. Late-responding schools were responsible for the bulk of that revision, said Omair Sharif, founder of analytics firm Inflation Insights.”
“'The decline in response rates for the initial release, that’s just going to make the range of revisions larger,' said Jonathan Pingle, an economist at UBS. 'They’re getting a significantly larger amount of incremental information after the initial deadline.'”
The way I understand it, the fired labor stat chief would show up as one less job in the BLS report but not the ADP report. Then, when she gets a private sector job, the ADP would show one added private employee. (Or, if not a new opening, no effect on number of private employees.) The Trump layoffs would affect the BLS report when the "getting paid not to work" time period runs out in September. The BLS Report must be discredited as layoffs in first federal, then state and local government reductions in workers proceed. The ADP only has private jobs not government jobs. As education gets privatized, if jobs went private in equal numbers, the BLS would show no change, and the ADP would increase the number of jobs. (Someone who knows more about ADP can correct this last statement if wrong since I interpret the ADP showing only private sector jobs as hiding public sector activity.)
To align survey workload with resource levels [budget cuts], BLS suspended data collection for portions of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) sample in select areas across the country starting in April. In April, BLS suspended CPI data collection entirely in Lincoln, NE and Provo, UT. In June, BLS suspended collection entirely in Buffalo, NY. Roughly 15 percent of the sample in the other 72 areas also was suspended from collection, on average.
It's a pleasure reading so many knowledgeable comments on how these statistics and statistics in general work. What @DrVenture wrote about speed vs. accuracy ("pick your poison") is textbook Information Science. For example, "breaking news" stories are immediate and often inaccurate or incomplete. Follow-ups in ensuing days are better, but of little help if first responders are needed immediately. And it's through the lens of history (years or decades) that one gets a more robust picture of events.
From @msf - “It's a pleasure reading so many knowledgeable comments on how these statistics and statistics in general work.”
Ditto.
My initial post was largely “tongue-in-cheek”. The idea that investors would welcome “cooked numbers” is facetious! (I used the British spelling “Labour” in that post as a clue.) But always, I look for ways to incorporate breaking stories like this into investment decision making. As I also said, Mr. Trump’s decision to fire the head of BLS was wrong. Period.
Putting the obviously political spin aside, some who should know have questioned the importance of the BLS numbers, noting a drop in respondents to BLS surveys from 60% a few years ago to around 50% now. BOA’s head, Daniel Moynihan, recently spoke to the issue:
And his remarks: “It's 2025 and the data should be able to be— they use surveys and things like that, which, frankly, just aren't as effective anymore. So if you look at the rate of people who respond to their surveys, it's down from 60% level to 50% level. You know, we don't use surveys (unintelligible) we do. We watch what consumers really do. We watch what businesses really do. They can get this data, I think, other ways and I think that's where the focus ought to be. How do we get the data to be more resilient and more predictable and more understandable.”
I’ll refrain from further comment. Political discussions can get ugly and personal. Not my cup of tea.
to be clear, this is in no way unusual for every trump decision being for personal benefit, be it financial or political. just because his benefit may be delayed is no reason to ignore 6 decades of such behavior, and then moving on to the next round of very expensive gop entertainment now in year 5/8. i'll refrain from further comment to let others speak :
"President Donald J. Trump’s firing of the commissioner of labor statistics on Friday for announcing that job growth has slowed dramatically has drawn a level of attention to Trump’s assault on democracy that other firings have not. Famously, authoritarian governments make up statistics to claim their policies are working well, even when they quite obviously are not. Yesterday former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told George Stephanopoulos of This Week on ABC News: “This is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism…. [F]iring statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers. It goes with launching assaults on universities. It goes with launching assaults on law firms that defend clients that the elected boss finds uncongenial. This is really scary stuff." In The Bulwark, Bill Kristol called out the open assault “on the truth, on the rule of law, on a free society” as “part of the broader pattern of the transformation of government information into pure propaganda..."
Excerpt from Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter this morning:
President Donald J. Trump’s firing of the commissioner of labor statistics on Friday for announcing that job growth has slowed dramatically has drawn a level of attention to Trump’s assault on democracy that other firings have not. Famously, authoritarian governments make up statistics to claim their policies are working well, even when they quite obviously are not.
Yesterday former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told George Stephanopoulos of This Week on ABC News: “This is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism…. [F]iring statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers. It goes with launching assaults on universities. It goes with launching assaults on law firms that defend clients that the elected boss finds uncongenial. This is really scary stuff." In The Bulwark, Bill Kristol called out the open assault “on the truth, on the rule of law, on a free society” as “part of the broader pattern of the transformation of government information into pure propaganda.”
Summers shot down Trump’s claim that the commissioner had rigged the numbers in the jobs report to make him look bad. "These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals,” he said. “There's no conceivable way that the head of the [Bureau of Labor Statistics] could have manipulated this number.”
Kathryn Anne Edwards at Bloomberg explained the implications of Trump’s determination to control economic statistics: “The peril…isn’t a potential recession; it’s losing highly reliable, accurate and transparent data on the health of the world’s largest economy.” As Ben Casselman pointed out in the New York Times, officials at the Federal Reserve, for example, need reliable statistics on inflation and unemployment to inform decisions about interest rates, which in turn affect how much Americans pay for car loans and mortgages.
Economist Paul Krugman noted that Trump lashed out against the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because most economists warned that Trump’s economic policies would hurt the economy, and the official data is starting to confirm that he was wrong and they were right. Krugman suggested that those numbers will continue to get worse as Trump’s tariffs and deportations start to show up in inflation.
An Associated Press/ NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released today shows that 86% of American adults report that the cost of groceries is a source of stress, with 53% saying it causes “major” stress. Only 14% of adults say the cost of groceries is not a source of stress for them.
Think about the inflation adjust on your TIPS ladder when the TBLS reports zero inflation. So no COLA on your Social Security and no inflation adjust on your “Low risk” TIPS ladder. But your cost of living will be going up at the same time. The orange economy.
But... but.. I don't understand. Why would beef prices increase just because beef from Brazil now costs 50% more? Wouldn't that cause inflation? </ sarc>
Comments
"There are no infidels in Baghdad. None whatsoever. This is false." [US tank rolls by in the background]
Anyone who is okay with firing people for failing to serve a predetermined, false narrative, is making sandwiches with the bread on the inside.
I would think the ADP report will become more trusted going forward, maybe....?
The below is a very good overview. The report is widely followed, and the data is announced and discussed at/on Bloomberg and CNBC tv business programs, and others.
ADP report
The ADP National Employment Report (also known as the ADP Report) is a monthly report that provides an independent measure of the US labor market's private sector.
Here's a breakdown of the key information about the ADP report:
1. What it is
The ADP National Employment Report measures the change in US private-sector employment and pay, according to PR Newswire.
It's based on anonymized payroll data collected from over 25 million private-sector employees across the US.
It's produced by the ADP Research Institute in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab.
2. What it shows
The report provides insights into overall private sector job gains and losses, pay growth, and sectoral employment trends.
It details the change in total private employment for the current month and weekly job data from the previous month.
The report includes a sectoral breakdown of employment changes by industry, allowing for detailed understanding of which sectors are growing or contracting.
It also categorizes employment changes by business size (small, medium, large) to highlight trends within different-sized companies.
The report also includes data on pay trends, specifically focusing on year-over-year pay growth for both job-stayers and job-changers.
3. Why it's important
Labor Market Indicator: It offers a timely and representative picture of the private sector, a crucial segment of the US economy.
Predictive Value: The report is released before the more comprehensive Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Situation Report, often serving as a leading indicator for predicting the BLS numbers.
Sectoral Insights: The detailed breakdown by industry helps understand specific sector performance and trends.
Economic Forecasting: The job and pay data are used by economists and market analysts for economic forecasting, influencing expectations for consumer spending, business investment, and overall economic growth.
Informs Business Strategy: The report helps companies understand labor market conditions, manage risk, and make workforce decisions, such as retention or layoff strategies.
4. Key recent findings (July 2025 report)
Private employers added 104,000 jobs in July, which was higher than the expected 77,000 addition and the largest monthly gain since March.
Hiring gains were primarily driven by the services sector, which added 74,000 jobs, particularly in leisure/hospitality and financial activities.
However, the education and health sector experienced a net loss of jobs, continuing a negative trend for the year.
Year-over-year pay growth remained relatively stable, with a 4.4% increase for job-stayers and a 7% increase for job-changers.
5. Next release
The August 2025 ADP National Employment Report is scheduled for release on September 4, 2025, at 8:15 a.m. ET.
In essence, the ADP report offers valuable insights into the health and dynamics of the US private sector labor market, acting as an important tool for businesses, investors, and policymakers alike.
each month for the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program.
The response rate for this program has plummeted since shortly after Covid was discovered in America.
The BLS has less data to work with now.
https://www.bls.gov/osmr/response-rates/
Issues encountered during the payroll employment collection/reporting process
are described in the article below.
www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-counting-jobs-is-really-really-hard/
Leaving aside the fact that many COFs cook the books to present the most favorable set of numbers they can to please the boss and the market, a simple search would tell you how different these two roles are.
Well going forward maybe they will not be very different, as the new BLS will be hired to cook the books.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/revisions-to-jobs-numbers.htm
The estimate of employment change is based on a monthly survey of about 560,000 worksites, selected to represent the millions of businesses throughout the country. (For simplicity, we will refer to worksites as businesses even though many individual businesses provide data for multiple worksites.) In the survey sample, businesses report the total number of people who worked or received pay during the pay period that includes the 12th of the month. Although BLS uses a variety of methods to gather these reports as quickly as possible, many businesses do not have their payroll data ready to report by the scheduled date that BLS initially releases the data. In 2012, for example, the average collection rate at the time of the initial release was 73.1 percent.
The initial estimate of job change for a month is based on the growth or loss of jobs at the businesses that have reported their data. Generally, BLS assumes that the employment situation at businesses that had reported is representative of the situation at those that had not yet reported. BLS continues to collect outstanding reports from the businesses in the sample as it prepares a second and then a third estimate for the month. With each subsequent estimate, more businesses have provided their information. In 2012, the average collection rate at the time of the third estimate for a month was 94.6 percent.
"The Consumer Price Index is more than just the most widely used inflation gauge and a measurement of Americans’ purchasing power.
However, this gold standard piece of economic data has become a little less precise recently: The Bureau of Labor Statistics posted a notice on Wednesday stating that it stopped collecting data in three not-so-small cities (Lincoln, Nebraska; Buffalo, New York; and Provo, Utah) and increased “imputations” for certain items (a statistical technique that, when boiled down to very rough terms, essentially means more educated guesses).
The BLS notice states that the collection reductions “may increase the volatility of subnational or item-specific indexes” and are expected to have “minimal impact” on the overall index. "
When the CDC reports increases in Cancer incidence and mortality, those officials will be fired, also. Florida under DeSantis, fired the public health officials responsible for Covid statistics when he didn't like the trends and numbers.
People who do not see how this will affect the economy, prices and our longevity are deluding themselves.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trading-day-stocks-bounce-back-210326952.html
Mr. Beach suggests that data from "state and local education units" may be the cause
for large revisions in May/June.
“We got some information from people, from businesses, and we think it was state and local education units, that was quite different than the first set of data points. Does this mean the economy is slowing down
or does it just mean that we're having a problem in a particular sector of the economy, in this case,
state and local education, which is very important, by the way, to the job estimates?”
“That remains to be seen.
But the point is, the revisions were made because there was more information.
Now, they were big revisions, absolutely, no question about that.
And not too many of those big revisions occur, though many did under my tenure
because I was the commissioner during COVID, totally different reasons why the revisions were big.”
On March 28th of this year, the Education Department abruptly cancelled extensions
it previously granted which allowed states/schools additional time to spend COVID relief funds.
Although I can't draw a definitive conclusion, it seems plausible that losing ESSER funding
could have caused significant job losses in the state/local education sector.
“McMahon said in her letter to state schools chiefs that it would now consider extensions
'on an individual project-specific basis.' It asked states to submit a statement explaining
why an extension is 'necessary to mitigate the effects of COVID on American students’
education' and 'why the Department should exercise its discretion to grant your request.'”
https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/linda-mcmahon-abruptly-tells-states-their-time-to-spend-covid-relief-has-passed/2025/03
as happened this summer, big revisions are likely.
For example, Friday’s data showed that in May and June, there were about 109,000 fewer jobs
for educators at state and local governments than previously thought.
Late-responding schools were responsible for the bulk of that revision,
said Omair Sharif, founder of analytics firm Inflation Insights.”
“'The decline in response rates for the initial release, that’s just going to make the range of revisions larger,'
said Jonathan Pingle, an economist at UBS.
'They’re getting a significantly larger amount of incremental information after the initial deadline.'”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/real-strains-inside-the-bls-made-it-vulnerable-to-trump-s-accusations/ar-AA1JU5vg
It's a pleasure reading so many knowledgeable comments on how these statistics and statistics in general work. What @DrVenture wrote about speed vs. accuracy ("pick your poison") is textbook Information Science. For example, "breaking news" stories are immediate and often inaccurate or incomplete. Follow-ups in ensuing days are better, but of little help if first responders are needed immediately. And it's through the lens of history (years or decades) that one gets a more robust picture of events.
Ditto.
My initial post was largely “tongue-in-cheek”. The idea that investors would welcome “cooked numbers” is facetious! (I used the British spelling “Labour” in that post as a clue.) But always, I look for ways to incorporate breaking stories like this into investment decision making. As I also said, Mr. Trump’s decision to fire the head of BLS was wrong. Period.
Putting the obviously political spin aside, some who should know have questioned the importance of the BLS numbers, noting a drop in respondents to BLS surveys from 60% a few years ago to around 50% now. BOA’s head, Daniel Moynihan, recently spoke to the issue:
CNBC
Saying of the BLS surveys, “frankly just aren’t that effective anymore.”
Adding, “They can get this data, I think, other ways, and I think that’s where the focus ought to be,” he said Sunday on CBS News.
“How do we get the data and be more resilient and more predictable and more understandable?”
Here’s a link to the Moynihan’s recent CBS interview .
And his remarks: “It's 2025 and the data should be able to be— they use surveys and things like that, which, frankly, just aren't as effective anymore. So if you look at the rate of people who respond to their surveys, it's down from 60% level to 50% level. You know, we don't use surveys (unintelligible) we do. We watch what consumers really do. We watch what businesses really do. They can get this data, I think, other ways and I think that's where the focus ought to be. How do we get the data to be more resilient and more predictable and more understandable.”
I’ll refrain from further comment. Political discussions can get ugly and personal. Not my cup of tea.
Regards All
just because his benefit may be delayed is no reason to ignore 6 decades of such behavior, and then moving on to the next round of very expensive gop entertainment now in year 5/8.
i'll refrain from further comment to let others speak :
"President Donald J. Trump’s firing of the commissioner of labor statistics on Friday for announcing that job growth has slowed dramatically has drawn a level of attention to Trump’s assault on democracy that other firings have not. Famously, authoritarian governments make up statistics to claim their policies are working well, even when they quite obviously are not.
Yesterday former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told George Stephanopoulos of This Week on ABC News: “This is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism…. [F]iring statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers. It goes with launching assaults on universities. It goes with launching assaults on law firms that defend clients that the elected boss finds uncongenial. This is really scary stuff." In The Bulwark, Bill Kristol called out the open assault “on the truth, on the rule of law, on a free society” as “part of the broader pattern of the transformation of government information into pure propaganda..."
But when I do, I only eat Kobe Beef (grade 5).
It's quite delicious!