The government has been fiddling with the numbers for months.
“Job gains have now been revised down for 10 months in 2023, by a monthly average of 51,000,” writes Peek. “This year the overstatements have continued, as have the revisions.”
The May report “made no sense. Estimates hovered around 185,000; the reported number was 272,000, up from 165,000 in April.”
Numerous other indicators cast a skeptical light on these numbers. And “since the gurus at the Federal Reserve rely on the data to determine the course of interest rates and, in effect, the economy, that the numbers appear to be so out of whack is troubling.”
Trust in government is down to 23 percent in a recent poll. “A dishonest White House takes the blame,” Peek writes, “but having the economic bean counters issue confusing and unreliable data doesn’t help.”
Read the op-ed at TheHill.com.
