The Indicator from Planet Money

Episode•March 7, 2025•9 min

Can ... we still trust the monthly jobs report?

Between the Trump administration wanting to change how GDP is calculated and DOGE accessing sensitive government information, statistical agencies are under the microscope. Can we still trust official numbers like the monthly jobs report? A former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner shares her worries about the future integrity of government data. Related episodes: Behind the scenes of Jobs Friday (https://www.npr.org/2022/06/03/1102884171/behind-the-scenes-of-jobs-friday) For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org (http://plus.npr.org/). Fact-checking by Tyler Jones. Music by Drop Electric (https://dropelectric.bandcamp.com/). Find us: TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@planetmoney), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/planetmoney/), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/planetmoney), Newsletter (https://www.npr.org/newsletter/money). To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below: See pcm.adswizz.com (https://pcm.adswizz.com) for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices (https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices) NPR Privacy Policy (https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy)

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Transcript

0:01

Npr. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods.

0:15

And I'm Waylon Wong. It is jobs Friday. That means we have the latest numbers on the US labor market from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The jobs report shows that 151,000 jobs were added in February. The unemployment rate nudged up to 4.1% from 4% in January.

0:33

The monthly jobs report is one of the major economic indicators that we rely on the government to produce. And generally, we trust that this data gives us an accurate snapshot of how US Workers are doing.

0:46

But recently, we've seen government data disappearing from public websites. We've seen Doge getting access to sensitive information. And in the past week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has disbanded two committees of outside experts that advise the government on economic data. He also talked about changing how gross domestic product gets calculated.

1:07

And people like Erika Groschen are concerned. Erika is a former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. She was also on one of the committees that Lutnick just nixed. Erica says that statistical agencies live and die by trust. Trust that the data is both secure and free from political interference.

1:27

If people don't trust the data, then you might as well not produce it.

1:31

And this data is vital to the economy. The jobs report moves markets. The Federal Reserve and other decision makers use the information to shape policy that affects all of us.

1:42

So today on the show, can we still trust official statistics like the monthly jobs report? Erica talks about the safeguards that are in place and shares her worries about the future integrity of government data.

1:57

The jobs report comes from two surveys that the BLS conducts, and they are built on trust. The people who answer the survey questions trust that their responses will be anonymized and used only for statistical purposes. And then the people who use that data, from policymakers to investors, trust the quality of that information.

2:17

Erica Groschen served as BLS commissioner from 2013 to 2017. She says the BLS and other statistical agencies have a whole litany of procedures to safeguard this trust.

2:30

It's built into the directives on how you, how the statistical agencies operate. It's built into the law. It's built into this great publication called Principles and Practices for a Statistical Agency. Sounds exciting. So it's front and present all the time, not because you're always fighting an active threat, but because everybody just knows that it's so important, the same way that people lock the door at night and do other things to make sure that they're warding off threats.

3:04

Here are some examples of those safeguards in practice, Erica says that when she was at the bls, only staffers tasked with data analysis could be in the rooms where that work took place. Even the janitors couldn't get into those rooms to empty the trash.

3:20

As commissioner, Erica would only see the jobs numbers when they were final. She also learned early on in her tenure that the report had to be written in the most neutral terms. No spin allowed.

3:31

When I gave a talk, I would show the proverbial glass with some water in it and say, what's the BLS answer? Is this half full or half empty?

3:43

What's your answer, Darian?

3:44

I know the exact answer to this. The BLS wants to say there is 150 milliliters of water here.

3:50

Oh, exactly right, Darian. Except, you know, Erica puts it in ounces, of course.

3:55

This is an 8 ounce vessel containing 4 ounces of liquid.

4:00

So congrats, Darian. You are qualified to write the monthly joust report. You know, the language is boring by design.

4:07

It's fine if the releases are boring. What's not fine is if they have a political or policy slant to them.

4:17

Erika shared two big worries with us when it comes to the BLS and the integrity of the jobs data. The first one is manipulation. Basically, who gets access to the information and what they might do with it.

4:30

Erica says meddling could show up in different ways. For example, someone in the government could change the public release schedule either to bury bad news or announce good news at an opportunistic time.

4:42

If this happened, it would be a massive change in how the BLS currently operates. The agency publishes a schedule of its data releases well in advance. Everyone gets the numbers at the same time. And this is important because the jobs report moves.

4:57

The stock market hiccups in this process, even if they're not the result of malfeasance, make headlines. Like last year, a BLS data release didn't happen as scheduled. People from a couple investment banks then reportedly called the agency and got someone to tell them the numbers. This had other people in the market crying foul that some people got the information early and could potentially trade on it. The BLS said at the time that it was reviewing its procedures to make sure it wouldn't happen again.

5:26

Erica also flags another potential kind of manipulation and that is changing how the BLS calculates the jobs numbers.

5:34

I worry about hubris that some person who feels they're very smart may feel, gee, the BLS shouldn't be doing it that way. They may have all their explanations for why they do it that way. But I'm smart and I think it should be done this way.

5:51

Oh, I have a better formula for calculating the unemployment rate or something.

5:55

Exactly.

5:55

Exactly.

5:56

Right.

5:56

Overseen how? The Commerce Secretary has his own idea about how to calculate gdp. He wants to take government spending out of the equation.

6:04

Yeah, and we'll have an episode on that next week. So between changing the release schedule or the equations. Manipulation is one of Erica's big worries about the bls. Her second major concern is resources. According to one estimate, the Bureau's budget has shrunk over 10% since 2009 when adjusted for inflation.

6:25

And it takes a lot of resources, both money and people, to conduct the surveys that feed into the jobs report. And I've got to think that BLS staffers are taking note of the big cuts to federal workers.

6:37

Yeah, fewer people makes the job of collecting and analyzing survey data harder. And response rates for the surveys have already been declining. That's a problem because smaller sample sizes could lead to lower quality data with more errors.

6:52

Data quality is also about what gets measured. Elise Gould is a labour economist at the Economic Policy Institute. It's a think tank that advocates for low and middle income working families. It's also part of a lawsuit seeking to bar DOGE from accessing systems. At the Department of Labor, which oversees the bls.

7:10

Elise recently went to look up government data on poverty levels by race and the information was gone. It later came back, but Elise says that if the administration decides it no longer wants to track, say, unemployment rates by by gender or race, that would be a blow to her work.

7:27

What I look for in the labor market is how is it affecting workers and their families? And you want to know how that affects not just the average, but different groups of people. Race and ethnicity and gender are very key indicators to know how people are doing in the economy. And we think having that complete picture is very important to have evidence based policymaking.

7:49

Both Erica and Elise say that they have faith in the staffers at the bls, this group of dedicated data nerds who would raise the alarm about interference. Erica says vigilance is part of BLS agency culture and the norms that underpin its work. Still, those norms are vulnerable.

8:06

They can be undermined. It's like what parents tell their kids. Trust takes a long time to build up and it can be ruined in an instant.

8:19

This episode was produced by Angel Carreras and engineered by Gilly Moon. It was fact checked by Tyler Jones. Cake and Cannon is our show's editor. And the indicator is a production of MP Prime.

Can ... we still trust the monthly jobs report?

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