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The Jobs Con Job
It was September 2012. Unemployment had been over 8% since Obama had taken office. “I don’t know much,” my neighbor said to me, “But I know this: The unemployment rate next month will be 7.9%.”
In the event, the reported rate was a much-heralded 7.8%, undermining Romney’s message that the country needed a better steward of the economy, and giving Obama a boost going into the November election. Outside of the MSM echo-chamber, however, skeptics noted anomalies in the data. The anomalies suggested inaccuracy at best, malfeasance at worst. Even Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, tweeted, “Unbelievable jobs numbers…these Chicago guys will do anything…can’t debate so change numbers.” The skeptics were vindicated a year later when John Crudele of the New York Post uncovered that the Census Bureau had, in fact, faked the data.
To calculate the unemployment rate, it would be ideal to know the employment status of every person in the country: working, looking for work, retired, in school, etc. In a country of 300+ million people, that is impractical. Instead, the Census Bureau conducts a survey each month. As with all surveys, there is sampling error and the value is really valid only within some range of error. Even so, in 2012 — and perhaps long before and after — Census Bureau employees falsified some underlying survey data.
Crudele has stayed on the beat, and last week published a remarkable story on continuing malfeasance at the Bureau. Fortunately, a whistleblower has stepped forward and congress is investigating (emphasis added):
A field supervisor in the Census Bureau’s Denver region has informed her organization’s higher-ups, the head of the Commerce Department and congressional investigators that she believes economic data collected by her office is being falsified.
And this whistleblower — who asked that I not identify her — said her bosses in Denver ignored her warnings even after she provided details of wrongdoing by three different survey takers.
The three continued to collect data even after she reported them.
When I spoke with this whistleblower earlier this year as part of my investigation of Census, she told me that hundreds of interviews that go into the Labor Department’s unemployment rate and inflation surveys would miraculously be completed just hours before deadline.
The implication was that someone with the ability to fill in the blanks on incomplete surveys was doing just that.
The Denver whistleblower also provided to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform the names of other Census workers who can spill the beans about data fraud in other regions.
As we head into the 2014 midterms next month, the (reported) unemployment rate has continued to drop, from 6.1% in August to 5.9% in September. As Crudele describes:
In fact, about a third of the recent decline in the unemployment rate can be attributed to a decline in the so-called Labor Participation Rate, which is now at a 36-year low. Ninety-six million Americans no longer consider themselves in the labor force.
Some think there is a logical explanation for this: baby boomers who are leaving the workforce because they simply don’t want to work anymore. But the data doesn’t bear that out.
There were 230,000 more workers aged 50 or older in the Household Survey released Friday. So how did the workforce decline by 315,000 people, if aging baby boomers were increasingly looking for jobs?
It’s either a miracle or someone’s pulling our leg.
So to recap: a government agency is out of control, systematically lying to the American people to make the Democrats look good. On the plus side — and in contrast to other scandals — a whistleblower has stepped forward and congress is investigating.
But frankly, I’m pessimistic. With the MSM unwilling to give these stories the attention they deserve, I doubt any elected official — Democrat or Republican — will have sufficient will or incentive to do the required housecleaning.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
Published in General
The household surveys are not conducted by BLS (in contrast to the establishment survey). The Census Bureau does not, as I understand it, turn over the raw survey data to BLS. Even if they wanted to — and it’s not certain that anyone there would care to start an interagency fight — they don’t have the data to check for manipulation.
AIG, you sound knowledgeable, and your arguments are plausible. Maybe this is nothing.
But you’d think a reporter from a big newspaper like WaPo or the Grey Lady might take an interest in this story to see if it’s really a wing-nut thing, as you posit, or if it’s a deeper problem, or it’s something else entirely. Perhaps I missed the big piece on this in the Sunday Times…
I believe the MSM’s lack of interest in the topic stems from the the fact that the story doesn’t propagate a narrative about which they care (i.e., that lower level Obama administration officials tried to rig the 2012 election — sounds like a wing-nut thing, Benghazi-ish even). I doubt many reporters have dived into this issue, which explains why I’m hearing this for the first time on Richochet.
If I’m wrong about that, links please.
As the saying goes, “There are three types of lies; lies, damn lies and statistics.” Frankly, I trust very little that comes out of our government these days, no matter who or which party is in charge. I fear that Winter is coming.
I don’t see why anyone would take an interest in this story. There doesn’t appear to be any story here.
What the American people believe isn’t an issue here. There’s so much…junk…in the press these days on this issue, that there’s no way the “American people” are going to be able to understand what these numbers mean, relying on “journalists”.
And by media here I don’t just mean the “MSM”. I mean all the utter junk one reads at many “conservative” websites and new-sources who try their best to fabricate “scandals” on everything. This case, being an exemplary case.
3 low-level ranking employees in Denver are identified as carrying out some “wrongdoing”, in the eyes of 1 person, and this turns into a “scandal”. Or the Census hiring from a few years ago being a “scandal”, even though the BLS numbers were obviously seasonally adjusted…afterwards…to eliminate the Census hiring.
So it’s not me that’s nitpicking on the methodology details. It’s people turning methodology details into an accusation of “fabrication”, when there isn’t evidence for one.
Sure it is. There’s 2 versions of it as I understand:
1) The microdata available online here: https://cps.ipums.org/cps/
2) The microdata available at the Census office itself (which needs to be physically accessed)
The second one is not “publicly available” in the sense that it’s not on the internet, or available to be accessed from anywhere.
But it’s publicly available at their location (and in fact, at other locations too. I know for example nearby me Texas A&M has access to it).
Thousands of researchers go through the data regularly to use it for their own projects.
Proving “fraud” in this case would be very simple, especially since these are longitudinal surveys (i.e. each household is interviewed over several periods).
None of the allegations seen here from this whistle-blower seem to be anything of significance. They just don’t. Surveys being recorded in the “last minute” is pretty much what happens every-time there’s a deadline, in any organization. It’s when the data entry occurs, not necessarily when the survey was conducted.
Then again, even IF every allegation here was true, this would have 0 impact on the employment numbers, since it’s located in 1 office, and accounts for a few hundred of the 110,000 individuals surveyed. It would do nothing to the numbers.
So again, some rather remarkable things would need to happen here for there to be some “fabrication” in the data:
1) The thousands of people involved, at various levels, would all have to be in on it.
2) The thousands of people utilizing this data, would have to be in on it.
3) There would have to be some systematic bias against Republicans and for Democrats (if the reasons for this are political, as is obviously implied). So did the Census Bureau and BLS not “fake” data during Bush, if they are doing so during Obama? Or did the entire management and research team at Census and BLS get fired after Bush and replaced by Democratic apparatchiks?
Obviously none of this makes sense.
Individual cases of “wrongdoing”, in the eyes of 1 individual whistle-blower, carried out by apparently a handful of low-level surveyors in 1 office, is hardly evidence of “fabrication”.
Certainly, the other allegations linked to; the Census hiring and the labor rate participation of “baby boomers” is a non-issue. The first is a seasonal adjustment issue, and the second isn’t even accurate.
You’re awful dismissive of a whistle blower saying the books were cooked. Maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s not. Someone should get to the bottom of what occurred and how pervasive it was.
I mean, it sounds like you would have very willingly accepted the IRS’s story that the low-level Cincinnati employees were entirely to blame in its scandal.
The difference being that there we know there was wrongdoing. Here, there’s no evidence at all. There’s simply a presumption of guilt given that they…show numbers we may not like.
I see nothing the whistle-blower is claiming that even constitutes wrongdoing of the scale we’re talking about. Just administrative issues with low-level employees, which happens anywhere, all the time.
And of course, the “whistle-blower” is only 1 of 3 arguments put forth for systemic “fabrication” here. The other two, are easily dismissable. And the whistle-blower case, even if 100% true (which doesn’t appear to be), would still have no impact on the numbers, nor does it show any “systemic” fabrication, or attempt at.
I don’t know enough of the specifics to know if there is fraud here or not, AIG certainly makes a strong argument.
I do think there are 2 very strong forces at play though that cannot be discounted. I don’t know the numbers but I feel very confident that most government employees are going to be Democrats and positively inclined toward government since it is in their best interest. I think the evidence is also clear that the press is by and large more favorable to the Democrat viewpoint. Even non-partisan people are still more inclined to act and interpret things aligned with their world view so I have no doubt that data is gathered, interpreted and reported with an approach that will be more inclined to tout and support liberal causes and less inclined to support conservative causes. People need not be intentionally corrupt for it to be so.
These two things make me very pessimistic about our future and I see nothing ahead but a slow steady, and probably irreversible, decline.
Undoubtedly, but data in itself can neither have a “liberal” or “conservative” cause. It’s just data. The BLS or Census don’t “interpret” the data. What journalists and commentators do with it, is another story.
Either way, if this was the case, one would expect biases to manifest themselves both under Republican administrations, and Democrat ones. Not only that, but the BLS wasn’t reporting rosy numbers for many years during the Obama administration. If they were going to “cheat”, why weren’t they cheating in 09-12?
I think Republicans or “conservatives” may have objections to these numbers similarly only for political reasons.
These numbers are about the worst numbers ever seen in an economic recovery in the US. So they don’t really support a “liberal cause” anyway. It’s simply that the economy recovers on its own, regardless of what the President may or may not be doing. We, as conservatives, have to celebrate that fact, rather than be disappointed that it took…6 years…to get to pre-recession employment, even with a declining labor participation rate.
We were going to recover no matter what.
Instead of taking the obviously political course of claiming “manipulation”, we should point out the obvious: it took 6 years…the longest recession in American history since the Great Depression, and even then we have the lowest labor participation rates in decades.
That’s the story, I think.
Can’t argue with much you’ve written there AIG but maybe this bit: Either way, if this was the case, one would expect biases to manifest themselves both under Republican administrations, and Democrat ones.
I think you are sure to be right where the information is coming from the political bits of the government, but I suspect the vast majority of those working in the federal government (probably any government) are liberal or at least left of center so I think there is an inherent left-leaning bias in most things that come out of government. The stories of infighting between bureau’s and leadership when Republicans are running the show are legion.
But that’s my point. If things are always “left leaning” biased, then shouldn’t you expect the same left-leaning biases to have happened during Bush’s term?
Why were the unemployment numbers so rosy during (most of) Bush’s terms? And why were they so bad during most of Obama’s terms?
We can’t pick and chose when we think they are “manipulating” and when they’re not.
PS: And of course, if BLS or Census were involved in any “manipulation”, what do they think might happen if a Republican administration comes into power in a couple of years, and audits their data? (which is publicly available anyway). Why would a researcher at BLS or Census making comfortably high 6-figure salaries jeopardize their careers to give a tiny and insignificant…monthly…bump to Obama’s popularity?
Good questions, and I’m willing to concede, but I do remember reading quite a few stories about various departments undermining the Bush administration. Including an entire book about the CIA’s attempts to subvert essentially everything Bush tried to do.
I don’t have nearly the confidence in these people that you do, but I will say that your confidence in them gives me a bit of hope.