Mon, 04 Aug 2025

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 Why were US job numbers which riled Trump revised down by so much?

President Trump has fired the head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics after the department revised down job numbers which he said were "rigged".

* President Donald Trump fired the head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after the department revised down recent job numbers by more than 250,000.
* Trump claimed the figures were "rigged" to make his administration "look bad", but former commissioners said the commissioner's role is only to review the final press release before publication and not to manipulate data.
* The BLS collects data from two surveys: one of households (60,000) and another of employers (121,000). Estimates come from the employer survey, which tends to be more reliable due to its large sample size.
* Revisions to initial job numbers are normal, with an average monthly change of 57,000 since 1979. Large revisions tend to occur during economic turmoil.
* The recent revisions for May and June were the largest on record aside from the COVID-19 pandemic, but not unprecedented, and analysts were already expecting changes due to unusual employment data in June.
* Response rates have dropped significantly over the last decade, with a notable decline since the pandemic, raising concerns about data reliability.
* Other countries are also experiencing similar issues with declining response rates and exploring new methods of data collection.
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