The BLS can't be replaced by the private sector
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
When you believe that government should not be providing many services, or doing most of what it currently does overall, why would you want to bolster trust in government statistics? Those statistics might contradict the administration, which is not a goal of the administration and its backers.
This is not a defense of the admin or their actions, but if there's something we should have learned well over the past 100+ years of history, it's not to assume insanity on the part of people who disagree with you. It feels good to assume that we are so correct that anyone disagreeing with us must be insane, but it's a deeply unproductive (and often counter-productive) way to interact with people.
Personally, I think they think that places like the BLS are stacked with "deep state" people that are trying to sabotage the current administration. I think that's mostly absurd, but they don't, and without evidence either way it's a matter of opinion (I personally lean heavily on things like Hanlon's Razor and trying to gauge "likeliness" rather than assuming the best or worst). If you believe as they do, then cleaning house is not only good but necessary, so the actions aren't insane. If we don't try to (in good faith) understand their beliefs/motivations, and just assume they are just randomly pulling triggers, not only will we only further entrench partisan divides (nothing alienates somebody more than feeling they aren't being properly understood), but we hinder our own ability to predict and prepare for the future.
To "sane-wash" is to take an extraordinary break from liberal order/american historical norms and treat such break as normal politics.
I completely agree that there are rational actors at the White House who have an incorrect sense of a Deep State at the BLS, and are taking what they would describe as a rational step and firing it's leader. But simply because they are rational does not mean that their subsequent decisions are rational.
If am a rational person and I have an incorrect belief that my house has cockroaches, then I burn down my house to get of the cockroaches, then the news media reports I "took bold new steps to rid my house of cockroaches," I have been sane washed.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-169836476
Others and I mercilessly criticized the BLS during the Biden Administration for the huge downward revisions that occurred every month under the prior administration. Reporting good numbers one month, only to revise them down significantly over the next two months, when no one was paying attention. Frankly, at the time, it looked political. Now it appears to be just gross incompetence.
Understand, the revisions to the employment data last Friday were the largest revisions in my lifetime. More than 90% of the initially reported jobs didn’t exist. Combined with the revisions over the past three years, it is clear that something at BLS is broken. I have spent a career building statistical forecast and prediction models. If my models produced 90% errors, I would have adjusted them, or I would have been fired. Ms. McEntarfer didn’t make adjustments….so she was fired.
You can try to steelman their view all you want, what we're seeing is bold-faced corruption: Trump coin crypto investor dinners, Trump mobile, receiving a $400M jet from Qatar, Tech executives donating to him in various ways to curry favor, and revoking security clearances from law firms who represent things he doesn't like. Just to name a few.
The absence of evidence is used as evidence of the thing (hostile deep state actors) existing, because they're so good they can hide their tracks so well that they can't be found. They must be stopped.
When lack of evidence is the proof... I'm not sure there's much room for rational discussion.
"...and just assume they are just randomly pulling triggers...hinder our own ability to predict and prepare for the future."
Speaking about the current politics and US administration, much of what's coming doesn't need to be 'predicted' - it's unfolding from the project2025 document. Not everything happening is from there, but quite a lot is.
You can see this in action even in here, a forum where most people are more well-educated than 90% of the global population, they still swallow those cries as if this administration is the victim.
What is even more amusing and weird is how much the same side likes to scream "stop being a victim" while continuously playing into victimising themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4
The liberal can't argue with inauthentic memes. They must give the benefit of the doubt by their own rules. The conservative sees this as an exploit that they can use to win the game every time. Because they see it as a game, amoral, based on scoring symbolic points for their preexisting tribal identity ("This family has always rooted for Liverpool"). They see it as a Conflict, not even of competing interests, but an inherent conflict of identity. The liberal insists on seeing it as a disagreement between friends, or an opportunity for education. An earnest Mistake. All of their rhetorical tools are based on persuading someone reasoning in good faith.
Nobody likes a loser. So if you want people to like your politics, don't be a loser.
Hell they lied about Trumps weight and height on his physical.
Even better, they can exult the virtues of select private sector companies who show "good" "approved" data.
What? No, no conflict of interest that members of the President's immediate family happens to hold board seats in those "approved" companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agencies_and_the...
Do you have any evidence of this happening? I've been involved on the side of the firm in many of these analyst reports, and I've never seen this happen. What /does/ happen is that to be listed at all, e.g. to have the analyst invest time/resources to review you, you have to pay. They don't exhaustively review every company in the segment or every product in the segment, regardless of size and market position. They only review those who pay to be reviewed or are large enough in market position that they are must-reviews (almost all of which also pay). But I've never seen the rankings/outcome dictated by pay at all. Much to my chagrin sometimes, the analyst will lower your ranking due to something I may have felt was a small issue, but they considered a large issue. Analyst Relations is a major investment area for large tech companies, and given my exposure over the last nearly decade, I've never seen any form of quid pro quo / money changing hands.
Private organizations will quickly start providing numbers that their customers want to see. Remember the risk ratings agencies prior to 2008? Yeah, finance guys want accurate risk assessments internally, but they always want good ratings on the stuff they're selling. Good ratings are a lubricant on transactions and since ratings are paid for by people making transactions there is more pressure in one direction.
The Trump admin has already shown a complete willingness to exert financial pressure on companies and organizations to compel compliance and our hypothetical private BLS replacement is not magically insulated from those pressures and threats.
> you could just trust the government numbers for free.
They're clearly in the middle of an attempt to cook the numbers to make the President look good.
If I'm a sailor paying for weather data related to my trip, I want to know about the dangerous weather.
You've never heard of the stock market, have you? Nobody cares about the "weather", they all want low interest rates and reports that justify the Fed taking interest rates to zero and below. That's it, nothing else matters.
> If I'm a sailor...
You aren't. Wake up.
If you have enough sources you presumably at least can start to make observations about which sources agree and which disagree.
Actually I presume something like this already exists, but I'm not an economist so I don't know.
> If the government’s jobs data is considered biased or unreliable, Wall Street will have other places to look. ADP reports figures on private payrolls, for instance. (And it also tells a bearish story: ADP showed a net loss of jobs in June, for instance.) Meanwhile, Gallup once tracked employment numbers on a weekly basis based on its large-scale surveys and could resume that effort. Or investment banks like Goldman Sachs might conclude they could have a competitive edge by tracking their own economic data.
But in the following paragraph he points out that the numbers aren't likely to be as accurate, comprehensive, or as reassuring as numbers generated by the government. Overall though it is a really good article worth a share of its own.
E.g. similar to Census data -- central data collection managed by govt, generalized anonymous data released for interpretation by anyone.
Statistics is often counterintuitive.
It's a lot harder to attack general best practice statistic collection than it is to throw shade at an editorial. (not that certain administrations have issues attacking best practice science)
Issue also arise "easily" when the people charged with producing editorials are political appointees who are easy targets for subsequent administrations looking to shift blame. (seems we're at this stage now)
Guess biggest worry would be if BLS actually starts keeping secrets and just publishing numbers they want.
Voting districts with higher populations receive a larger number of representatives. Currently we do not differentiate and legally the census defines these numbers which is very hard to change. If a census is run with these identified you have strong legal arguments with the "Current" Supreme Court to remove those immigrants/illegal immigrants from the representative totals.
The side benefit for this admin is many legal immigrants and some residents become more untrustworthy of those style questions and also do not answer again lowering representation in those districts further.
The Census is inaccurate if the goal is legally removing those people from the representative counts.
But trying to do it now makes no rational sense, and neither does the Texas redistricting move. It's all about the 2026 election, and given how he's trying every possible angle, no matter how unprecedented, I think he knows he's in trouble.
The current 2-party system with fixed terms almost lends itself to promoting the political appointee system where entire department head counts turn over after a change in ruling party. If you're a "career" politician it's a no-brainer to fill these positions wholesale with people who are favorable to your world view, or donated to your administration, or spend lots of money at your hotel chain, ...
Previous users of this data will seek alternative, less precise signals elsewhere and likely use conservative, pessimistic guesstimates that will tend to be risk-adverse and not encourage expansion or investment.
I think the government stuff is a bit of a farce. They have an incentive like any other institution. For instance, inflation metrics are tied to trillions of dollars in terms of retirement benefits or other programs that are indexed to inflation. They have a gigantic incentive to play with the numbers. And I'm 100% convinced that they do. Does anyone believe food prices went up only 28% since pre-covid? Did something go from costing $4 to $5? No, most things close to doubled. But they're able to play with the numbers changing the basket (beef getting more expensive, we'll just swap that out with Tofu!).
They have a lot of discretion, it's not formulaic. If it was, ironically it would be great to privatize! Here are the specs, and provide proof. Easy.
Here is from the world bank talking about tight and loose specifications:
> The CPI Manual refers to tight and loose specifications of product or item varieties. Tight specifications better facilitate the calculation of average prices and ensure comparability of items across countries, which is the aim of ICP price collection. Accordingly, the ICP stipulates strict requirements for the selection of items for pricing. These may include restricting the choice of brand or the size of an item by weight, volume, or quantity for example. For the CPI, tight specifications tend to be useful for electronic and other items with high rates of turnover.
Again, look at the facts:
1. It's complicated and not easily observable
2. There is some discretion
3. Politics and trillions in government spending is on stake
4. The numbers don't match personal experience
https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/2b29c1445d7fa006e5f4ca0...
Now you have four problems, as it were.
If the thesis is that the government can't be trusted to run its own affairs, then more government isn't a solution.
The actual "fourth branch" of government is supposed to be the people, either giving a shit and being engaged in their civic duty and not electing tyrants for entertainment value or to "own the libs," or else doing the other thing that Americans love to talk about doing.
In such a setup, lack of democratic oversight is not a bug but a feature. It prevents democratically elected but possibly not entirely stable governments from doing something stupid. The drawback, of course, is that it also prevents democratically elected and intensely well meaning governments from doing the right thing if the supranational entity does not wish to facilitate that right thing.
This setup works (after a fashion) for a group of small and fairly weak countries, but for a single large and powerful country like the US there simply isn’t a supranational entity powerful enough to reign it in.
The point being that revisions can be huge.
Given the climate created by the TACO-ing over tariffs its not surprising that these numbers are inconsistent.
And Trump keeps rewriting history about the numbers impacting elections. The last number before elections were the Oct numbers released on 1-Nov-24. That was abysmal at 12k jobs. Trump even complained about in his campaign speeches. But never let truth stand in the way of Trump and his supporters.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11012024.ht...
Why not all three?
When the reported data changed they changed their data too.
That‘s not putting out wildly incorrect facts that’s putting out data based on currently known facts
I want a minimal government enforcing both internal and external property and ensuring private property rights are respected. And that's it.
The government debt is in the tens of trillions. Government deficit is more than a trillion.
No, more government and more government-loving propaganda is not what's needed.
If no one needs some data doesn't that imply capturing it is a waste of time and energy?
You can't run a modern country without collecting real world data about the country's economy.
The data is backward looking, sometimes by as much as 3 months, rarely less than a month old. The only way the "data" knows there is a reccession is if it stared 3/4 of a year ago.
If you are a CEO or running a business and you are blaming your business decisions on the stats from 3 months ago that came out today you should get out of the chair and let someone with a brain sit in it.
If employment is weak, you might cut staff yourself, or maybe cut costs elsewhere.
You might change your product mix to serve a different set of customers. You could change pricing.
No. It is not about feeling better.
> Private companies are in the business of making a profit, and to do that they need to attract customers. Some customers are more profitable than others. As a result, a company’s data will tend to reflect the needs of its clients — it won’t capture the economy as whole.
Honestly, it is a very, very good paragraph. There is a slavish devotion to the idea that markets are efficient and that is the most desirable outcome in all situations. If you are in the business of being a government and running a country for all of your citizens, you need all the data, not just select aspects of it, and not just those that tell a particular story.
There is an infinite amount of data. And most of it is useless. Governments do not need to know how many fry cooks read exactly 3 novels from authors who names end with a letter in the first half of the alphabet in the last year.
So that is why it is important to understand that the government needs data for it's purposes (and not more than that). Restricting data to the narrow purposes of whichever company is willing to pay to produce select economic statistics will leave everyone worse off.
This isn't what the article said. It essentially said the data would be based off what people who use the data need. If the government needs some data it would still be able to get it.
Lets just start with something simple: Are you assuming that the government only needs what people are willing to pay for?
That's how it was with the space program, the military, and many utility companies that were privatized, yet it seems we just continue to hammer the idea that "private companies will do everything better".
I mean, the Fed uses BEA PCE data and not BLS CPI data for inflation, so it would seem consistent for them to use BEA employment data as well.
Of course. if manipulating the source of the popular headline figures doesn't have the desired impact on the Fed, Trump would eventually probably exert the same pressure on BEA.