Who Ya Gonna Believe, Part 2

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the depressing economic news that is not reported in the corporate media.  (See Who Ya Gonna Believe, “Them” or Your Own Eyes?)  What we hear from “Them” is “everything is fine.”

Well, I stumbled upon another, potentially more serious bit of economic news that just isn’t reported:  the perceived manipulation of employment data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

You know, faith in our institutions has been steadily declining over the last decade or so.  According to Gallup:

“Government” isn’t a category in the Gallup list, but I suspect that its trajectory is on a downward slope the same as the others listed above. Without getting into specifics, which isn’t in the scope of this article, we’ve seen various departments within the Federal government become corrupted.

Now it appears that the BLS, once the gold standard and a bedrock of actionable financial information, appears to be “cooking the books.”

Each month, the BLS reports unemployment data.  I explained some of the BLS data in It’s The Economy, Stupid!  The quantity and detail of the data released each month is truly voluminous.  But the majority of the corporate media only reports the number of new jobs created and U3 unemployment rate, which is the rate of people actively looking for work.

The BLS obtains this data by surveying businesses.  Due to the nature of these surveys, the results are not always as complete as the BLS would like.  As a result, the BLS commonly makes revisions to prior months’ data.  This is totally normal and expected.

But what is not normal, and what we’ve seen over the last several months, is that the revisions posted by the BLS often are significantly worse than the original numbers reported.

For example:

Note in each week reported the initial number of unemployment claims (in blue) was revised markedly higher (in red).

Here are the number of jobs created for January to August 2023.  The blue is what the BLS reported initially, the brown is the revised amount and the red is the reduction between the two:

Again, note that the revisions are all lower.

Without getting too far in the weeds here, I can tell you that there are similar revisions in other statistics like GDP, housing starts and others.

Why is this happening?  Well, going back to the beginning of this article, many parts of government have been corrupted (CDC, DOJ, FBI, etc.) as has been proven in the media.  It appears that the BLS is now no different.

What’s to be gained from this?  Well, on the first Friday of each month the BLS releases the unemployment data.  If the number of new jobs created is reported higher than the actual, then the unemployment rate can be lower and good headlines are received in the press.  But the prior months’ revisions are also announced by the BLS but never get widely reported in the corporate media.  This fact causes the unemployment news to appear better than it actually is.

You’re a smart person, I don’t believe I need to tell you why this may be happening.

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“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won.  There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall.  Think of it--always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

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Babies’ First Food (You’d Make These Faces Too If You Ate Strained Peas!)

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