Putting the BS in BLS: The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Made-Up Job Numbers

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge.

New job numbers are out and—hilariously—payrolls jumped 227,000, yet persons employed dropped 355,000. Are they just making it up?

The numbers are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which—thanks to the power of imagination—reports that jobs are booming, yet the unemployment rate is … worse, rising to 4.2%. It’s actually 7.3%, using the wider U-6 unemployment number that the legacy media only report when the president is a Republican.

So, how does payroll soar but unemployment gets worse? It’s because the other jobs survey the BLS uses says the number of employed people actually plunged by 355,000 people last month.

It’s worth noting +227 in a month is a job boom for the ages, while -355 is a depression. Which is it? Who knows? Keep in mind this is the same agency reporting both numbers. And this report was widely touted as a critical guide for the Fed, which is kind of left with … who knows?

Now, regular people might wonder how they could be so far off. The short answer is government numbers on everything from jobs to inflation to growth contain an entire library of assumptions, models, and survey techniques to creatively extrapolate.

The gaps should tell them their models are garbage.

But, of course, those assumptions are extremely useful to agencies who can torture the numbers to say anything they want. That’s particularly useful when your budget is up, and you need to show you’re a team player. Or not a team player if the president is named Donald Trump.

In other words, follow the money. When the president is somebody the bureaucrats like—a Democrat—assume the worst. And when the president is somebody the bureaucrats are trying to hurt, assume that’s what’s driving it.

So, with that, what else was hiding in the job reports? Beyond the 355,000 plunge in persons employed, Zerohedge reports the number of long-term unemployed is stuck at 1.7 million—up nearly 50% from a year ago.

Labor force participation—the percent of people working or in school—is also stuck, down 2 million since before COVID-19, down 4 million from the Trump 1.0 trend. And down 9 million since the 2008 crisis and the Obama miracle.

Incidentally, the BLS reports that 5-1/2 million people out of the labor force want a job, yet they’re not counted because they’re not actively looking. That’s interesting because there are more than 5-1/2 million illegals taking low-skill jobs and keeping them at minimum wage. Seems like a pretty simple fix.

Speaking of illegals, one bright spot was a tumble in illegal immigrant workers—perhaps because hundreds of thousands are preparing to self-deport, or at least they’re going to ground. If it’s self-deportation, we’ll see a surge in wages for low-skill Americans who no longer have
to compete for minimum wage.

We’re already seeing green shoots as real hourly earnings stopped falling last month, breaking a 2-1/2-year downward trend. Keep it up, and blue-collars might actually support a family on a factory job.

So, what’s next?

Jobs were supposed to give the Fed guidance with inflation rising again. Goldman called it “the most important remaining macro report of 2024.” Sadly, what they got from our finest federal statisticians was maybe +227, maybe -355.

And so, the Fed’s left once again with no idea what’s happening, a blindfolded elephant in the China
shop with regular Americans dodging the fallout.

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