Friends,
Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve tried to give people selected for a president’s cabinet the benefit of the doubt until they show they don’t deserve it. That’s especially true for the office I held, because I know how challenging it can be.
Yet here’s what Trump’s Labor Secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, whose labor department includes the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said yesterday about data it released showing that the U.S. economy added almost a million fewer jobs earlier this year and in 2024 than at first reported.
“Today’s massive downward revision gives the American people even more reason to doubt the integrity of data being published by BLS. Leaders at the bureau failed to improve their practices during the Biden administration, utilizing outdated methods that rendered a once reliable system completely ineffective and calling into question the motivation behind their inaction.”
Bullsh*t.
The revised data was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as part of a longstanding annual process known as benchmarking. That process often results in substantial revisions to previous job numbers because it’s based on additional information available six months or more after the monthly reports.
The latest revision was not surprising. Most forecasters anticipated a substantial downward adjustment based on quarterly data released earlier this year.
Most news coverage of this revision has focused on the higher likelihood that the Fed will now lower interest rates.
But I feel compelled to say something about Secretary of Labor Chavez-DeRemer’s gratuitous and baseless attack on the integrity of the B.L.S.
As secretary of labor I spent years guarding the independence of the B.L.S. because I knew how important that independence is.
Career economists and statisticians in the B.L.S. are dedicated professionals who painstakingly analyze data gathered monthly and yearly. They could earn much more in the private sector but have chosen to devote their careers to the public good.
They’re not Democrats or Republicans; they have no partisan motivation or agenda. They’re public servants who deserve our appreciation.
Chavez-DeRemer has shown herself to be a political flack who, like many of her cabinet peers in the Trump regime, has relinquished her integrity.
Not only has she impugned the honesty of public servants at the B.L.S. but she’s further undermined public trust in what had been one of the most trustworthy institutions in the entire U.S. government, on which we rely for understanding what is happening to the economy.
Bad enough that Trump fired B.L.S. commissioner Dr. Erika McEntarfer because he didn’t like the job numbers she reported on August 1 — claiming without evidence that they were “rigged in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad” — and then nominating as her replacement a person with zero credibility among economists.
Now, even the U.S. secretary of labor — whose job it is to protect the independence of the B.L.S. from political meddling and to uphold public trust — is willing to make baseless claims that the B.L.S. cannot be trusted, for the utterly cynical purpose of currying favor with her sociopathic boss.
She’s a disgrace.
This post has been syndicated from Robert Reich, where it was published under this address.