Bidementia may be pissed enough at Kamela that he was willing to let the Bureau of Labor Standards publish a massive downward revision in the employment numbers for 2023. Since the monthly reports for that year had been regularly changed in subsequent months, and other data sources had indicated that they were overstated, this wasn’t really a surprise. Turns out there were 818,000 fewer jobs than had originally been reported, the biggest downward revision since 2009. That means there were about 70,000 less additions per month. The decreased was in high-paying areas, like 360,000 in professional and business services. Other notable areas of decline were retail at 129,000 jobs, manufacturing at 115,000 and leisure and hospitality at 150,000. One area that wasn’t changed down was government, which actually went up 1,000 jobs.
The revisions wiped out the supposed monthly reports which surpassed expectations, reports which boosted the stock market. The Federal Reserve likely already was aware of the discrepancy so this is unlikely to affect its stance on interest rates. But it certainly won’t do anything to improve trust in government statistics. (ZH Post)
