It didn't fall - they have been overstating it for years and the cat slipped out of the bag

They have a fixed methodology and they also revise it as data comes in - usually after the report has been released for one or more months (see [1], [2])

1. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/revisions-to-jobs-numb...

2. https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/sep/12/revisions-job...

Your counterpoint presents citations from the year 2019 and circa 2012. OP there posted that they were now cheesing the numbers "for years" - seems to me "for years" might cover the range 2020 (COVID) - 2024, but not your citations. Anything that says under the post-covid administration they aren't cheesing the job numbers?

This article: https://recruitonomics.com/revisions-to-the-job-numbers-may-... Posits that indeed during recessions, most revisions are negative, and the reverse is true for economic booms.

So if we think maybe there's some kind of recession in the 2020-2024 time range it might be expected to see a series of downward revisions.

The more tender point is whether these ongoing downward revisions are simply the nature of the beast, or if someone is pressing their thumb and cheesing the numbers a bit to give the impression of no-recession. This is a tender point because some of the unemployment metrics are sus i.e. "people who have been looking for a job for 1-9 weeks, but not more, and it's a full moon on a Tuesday". The more that diverges from (100% - <Definitely employed %>), the more that definition of unemployed is cheesing it. But if the numbers are getting tuned up over here, it's natural to suspect the same party is tuning up numbers over there too.

No.

If you’d bother to spend any time learning about how this process works, you’d hold a different opinion.

What mechanism do they use to overstate it?

> What mechanism do they use to overstate it?

Statistical illiteracy in American early (EDIT: primary) education. The magnitude of this revision, for example, is -0.5 percent.

> Statistical illiteracy in American early education.

This commentary isn’t necessary. It’s also odd, as no country teaches statistics in early education.

> no country teaches statistics in early education

Elementary. Basic statistical concepts are covered in elementary/primary school, e.g. conducting surveys, so they can be built on later.

The number of high schoolers and even undergraduates here who come out of school with zero ability to understand e.g. revisions, treating them as divine omens instead of something which can be understood, is striking.

No, you don't understand, Biden is personally preventing schools from teaching second-graders how to identify p-hacking so that they overestimate the economy and convince their parents to vote for Harris.

Magnitude of 0.5!!! Percent?

Anyone who makes estimation of economy with a tolerance of MAGNITUDE 0.5% should be fired.

You may be confusing magnitude [1] and orders of magnitude [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitude_(mathematics)

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude

Could have sworn I read " ... order of magnitude ..."

Won't bother to recheck, me that is.

These numbers have paper trails which would require large conspiracy among civil servants who have really no reason to care about fudging numbers... and if they had this conspiracy operating why would they reveal this at all? It would require an oversight investigation of some sort beforehand.

Besides (not) being told "this is how we're counting", there are incentives that align with functional overstatement.

A weak example is keeping people on payroll who may not have active contracts. There's no reason to purge them if they're eligible to resume working (within the allowed period, which may be, say, 12-18 months), but it's not strictly fair to count them as being employed in the same way as a traditional 12 month FT hire.

Last year, we purged over a thousand people from payroll who hadn't officially separated. Unusual, but not abnormal. Who would call that a conspiracy?

I think it's convenient to lie in aggregate, especially when "job creation" and high payroll counts loosely correspond to economic growth and if not eligible voters, then at least tax revenues.

Imo the us desperately needs to break up large monopolies and reestablish or increase free market competition.

It increases innovation, increases jobs, increases labor movement, and decreases inflation.

I'm of the opinion that a great deal of the last round of inflation was companies realizing their cartel power to set high prices because meaningful competition is so rare.

We like will be onshoring or near shoring more production in the coming decades and large cartel powers are less likely to do so because of sunk costs.

... It won't happen though.

Manufacturing is getting worse from the U.S. Air Force having to reverse engineer parts to the U.S. Navy facing similar challenges with obsolete components and diminishing manufacturing sources for its aging fleet. Boeing in decline ... the list goes on but then there is SpaceX.

Note that publicly traded companies are incentivized by the government and wall st. to send manufacturing out of the country.

> from the U.S. Air Force having to reverse engineer parts to the U.S. Navy facing similar challenges with obsolete components and diminishing manufacturing sources for its aging fleet

Military procurement is a bad source from which to project all American manufacturing. You’re also comparing a quality problem (USAF) to a quantity problem (closing shipyards).

Also that a lot of (specifically Navy) sourcing problems come from DOD being the only buyer of obsolete products, such as 8-bit microcontrollers used in fire control systems designed in the 1970s.

It’s sexier to build useless warships without weapons that get scrapped in months than to keep a gun or sensor working in sustainment.

Considering how cheap money was during the last decade or so, I dont think it was a matter of resources in dislodging competitors, it was a lack of imagination.

There's still much too much over regulation in my opinion though, and too much monopolization. Cheap money being dumped into a broken system won't do much. But you raise an important point.

I keep thinking a few states could actually do a few things to help this by requiring local production. For example, if $STATE added a regulation that prohibited the import of less than a half-cow carcase into the state, requiring local meat packing and butchery, this could cut into the mega packers and limit the risk of an infection taking out an industry for weeks. Similarly for other products. It would also keep at least some more of that money circulating in the state/country.

I'd also like to see FDA requirements for at least dual-sourcing for all prescription medications and at least 50% domestic production.

While these won't force the large conglomerates to break up, it would allow for at least some opportunities for local and upstart competition. A lot of it makes sense strictly from a defence of supply lines PoV. Which should have been a set of major lessons learned from COVID.

I also do favor heavier tariffs in trade with nations that don't have similar work standards and/or use non-criminal citizens/residents effectively as slaves.

On top of all of that, yeah, the FTC needs to break up some of the massive conglomerates.

My limited understanding is that the interstate commerce clause significantly prevents this. States cannot regulate interstate commerce.

They can regulate their own. You cannot bring certain plants into California. You cannot transport live crawfish in Arizona. The entire base premise of "Smokey And The Bandit" is based on state restrictions.

A state may be limited in things transported through the state, not necessarily into/for the state.

It might, some good steps appearing. Lets check back in 12 years

Employment is not a meaningful metric. During the Nile-floodings, employment was at an all time high - and that was a pyramid-scheme.

Seasonal employment is tracked separately and can be accounted for[1].

[1] https://www.bls.gov/sae/seasonal-adjustment/

> Seasonal adjustment eliminates the part of the change attributable to the normal seasonal variation and makes it possible to observe the cyclical and other nonseasonal movements in CES State and Area series.

Note that this is still a preliminary revision.

The first estimate is “based on a monthly survey of about 560,000 worksites” [1]. While this is fast, “many businesses do not have their payroll data ready to report by the scheduled date that BLS initially releases the data.”

The second estimate, this one, incorporates “state unemployment insurance (UI) tax records that nearly all employers are required to file” [2].

These data keep getting updated as survey figures come in, all the way to tax filings the following year. Because the easiest response—to a survey or for filings—is “no change,” the employers making the most changes, whether hiring or firing, respond and file the latest. That makes the figures lagging. When the economy is booming, the numbers are revised up. When it’s falling, down.

Those who can read the data know this is natural, given the methodology. Those who cannot see conspiracy in a cover-up (when numbers are revised down) or the deep state not giving their team credit (when up).

[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/revisions-to-jobs-numb...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/ces/notices/2024/2024-preliminary-benchm...

[dupe]

News from 2 days ago, discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41311519