Marc Abear: When a mistake is consistently repeated, it becomes a lie

To The Daily Sun,

The public needs to be able to trust government statistics. When federal agencies provide inaccurate economic data, it does not matter why it is inaccurate. The point is bad information is harmful whether it comes from bias or lack of competence.

The damage is done to public confidence through poor policy decisions. Mistakes happen when decisions are made without benefit of facts. President Donald Trump’s decision to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer was as justified as it was overdue. 

BLS payroll and employment data was nothing more than partisan manipulation. The Trump administration did what previous administrations would not do. They have held a politicized technocrat accountable for distorting economic data in favor of a partisan narrative.

BLS reporting during the Biden administration was inaccurate. In nearly every month of 2023, BLS initially reported strong job gains. Later BLS revised their information downward, almost always significantly. 

It got so bad, a U.S. senator pointed out, 16 of the past 17 reports had been revised in the same direction, down. These are not random errors. They are directional, cumulative, and, they provided the Biden administration with a steady stream of positive headlines.

In 2023 alone, BLS overstated job growth by approximately 800,000 jobs. That number is not insignificant or within a reasonable margin of error. Roughly one in every four jobs reported as “added” in 2023 did not exist. They were fabricated by methodological negligence. The mistakes were always wrong in favor of the political preference of the bureaucracy.

The standard defenses include: early estimates are volatile; revisions are normal; there’s no sinister intent. Those defenses collapse when they are repetitious. If BLS was making mistakes we would expect to see revisions in both directions. That didn’t happen.

Marc Abear

Meredith