Trump calls routine review of labor market figures a “lie”

Each year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revises its monthly employment numbers, which are based on a survey of employers, based on more comprehensive data it later receives from government records. But former President Donald Trump called this year's revision a “total lie” and baselessly claimed that “the Harris/Biden administration was caught fraudulently manipulating the labor market statistics.”

There is no evidence for such claims, nor has the Trump team presented any.

The BLS, a nonpartisan statistics agency that publishes a wealth of statistics on employment, wages, inflation and more, released a preliminary estimate on Aug. 21 that the number of jobs created in the 12 months ending in March would likely be revised downward — 818,000 fewer than the original estimate of 2.9 million jobs. That represents a -0.5 percent adjustment to March's employment level and is larger than the average revision over the past decade of plus or minus 0.1 percent, the BLS said. The final estimate will be released in February 2025, when the January employment report is released, the date final revisions have been released every year since 2004.

Although the revision would be significant, there have been other major revisions in the past. The 2019 annual revision under Trump called for job cuts of 514,000 jobs, -0.3 percent of the original March 2019 employment estimate. The 2009 revision called for job cuts of 902,000 jobs, -0.7 percent of the original March 2009 estimate.

The former president and his campaign have repeatedly claimed that something sinister is afoot with the latest preliminary estimate. “It's really not an audit, it's a complete lie, a complete lie. There's never been an audit like this before. They wanted the numbers to come out after the election, but somehow they leaked,” Trump claimed on August 21 in North Carolina.

The revision has not been “leaked.” The BLS announced on July 5 that it would release the preliminary revision estimate on August 21, around the same time as in past years.

“The Harris/Biden administration was caught manipulating the jobs statistics to hide the true extent of the economic ruin they have inflicted on America,” Trump continued. “The new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the government inflated the numbers by an additional, get this, 818,000 jobs that don't exist.”

Currently, 15.8 million new jobs have been created in the US under President Joe Biden. The revision, if confirmed, would reduce this number to around 15 million. This is not evidence of “economic ruin,” as Trump put it.

Two days later, in Las Vegas, Trump claimed, “They reported false jobs,” adding again that the numbers would never have come to light without “a patriotic leaker.”

“There is no evidence of manipulation or inflation,” David Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and director of U.S. economic research at Bloomberg Economics, told us in a phone interview. “Last week's announcement was completely formulaic in two ways. First, it followed the pattern we've seen for many years that a preliminary estimate was generally announced in the summer before the final revision was implemented with the release of the January data. So this is a pattern that has been developing over many years.”

Second, Wilcox pointed out that the BLS announced on July 5 that it would release the preliminary estimate on August 21.

How the BLS estimates employment

The BLS uses what's called the Establishment Survey to estimate the change in national employment each month. It's a survey of about 119,000 employers, covering about 30% of U.S. employment.

“The survey is well constructed and the weights are carefully calculated to make the results as representative as possible of the different types of employers in the U.S. by size and location,” Wilcox, a former director of the Federal Reserve Board's statistics division, told us. He is also chairman of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, a group of independent experts who advise government statistics agencies. He stressed, however, that he was not speaking on behalf of the committee in our interview.

Like any survey, the Establishment Survey is subject to error. To get a more comprehensive estimate, the BLS uses employers' state unemployment insurance tax returns to determine what taxes they owe to unemployment compensation programs. While these data are not as timely as the monthly surveys, they cover about 97 percent of U.S. nonfarm employment.

Once a year, the BLS adjusts its monthly estimates in a process called “benchmarking” based on March employment levels from unemployment insurance claims.

The adjustment of an estimated 818,000 announced on August 21 was “a little higher than normal,” Wilcox said, but many analysts had expected a downward revision, as they were keen to see the extent to which the number would reflect the labor market slowdown.

Goldman Sachs analysts said they had expected a downward revision of 600,000 to 1 million jobs. But they also noted that the BLS estimate of about 500,000 jobs could be too high because many immigrants who work but are in the country illegally are unlikely to be included in the unemployment insurance system — although they would be included in the business survey numbers — and because unemployment insurance data have often been revised upward.

The BLS will complete the estimate and make the final adjustment in February, as it has done for more than two decades. The final number probably won't be exactly 818,000, “but historically the preliminary estimate has been a pretty good guide to the final benchmark revision,” Wilcox said.

We asked Wilcox about the nonpartisan nature of the BLS and he said, “There is only one political appointee at the agency and that is the commissioner, the No. 1 person, and you can bet that if there was any effort on the part of the administration to influence the numbers that the BLS reports, the protests from the rank and file, from the top management, from the entire organization would be deafening.”

We asked the Trump campaign for support for its claim that the original BLS estimates were somehow falsified and for its claim that the preliminary revision estimate was “leaked” before the election. We received no response.

Perhaps Trump's “leak” comment refers to the fact that the BLS released the estimate at 10:30 a.m. on August 21, instead of the 10:00 a.m. announced date. Some eager analysts called the BLS during the delay and were able to obtain the estimate, the New York Times reported.

But that is not evidence that the estimate should not have been released at all or that a “patriotic leaker” forced the BLS to do so. The release of the preliminary estimate this summer follows the same process the agency has used for years, including during Trump's administration.

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