There is an old saying, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” And the federal government loves to spew statistics.

Americans are finding it harder and harder to trust the information presented by federal officials as totally factual. How many times have officials said one thing and then had to correct or backtrack statements?

People need to know that government details are correct, especially when it comes to economic news. A key economic indicator used by the government, and promoted by the president, has been exposed as a padded bunch of statistics.

From the Daily Caller:
The original number of jobs reported by the federal government in 2023 was revised down by a total of 749,000 jobs, meaning nearly one-fourth of jobs thought to be created in the year were not actually there.

The revelation comes from data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and analyzed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The government’s monthly job growth reports in 2023 totaled 3,140,000 new jobs, but later revisions subtracted from the total.

“That pattern of consistent downward revisions has happened in two prior recessions,” said E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget. “It is a result of market conditions changing too rapidly for the BLS to adjust their methodology, which in turn causes consistent errors in measuring nonfarm payrolls.”

Every month in 2023, except July, had to be revised in the jobs report, excluding December. The final month of the year will be revised, if needed, in reports this month and next. One striking piece of data was the monthly addition of government jobs that have ballooned the total number of government employees to an all-time high of 23 million.

The outlet reported that the downward revisions last year over so many months is not typical compared to the previous two years. In 2022 there were only five months of negative revisions, and the total for the year was 66,000, according to the BLS. In 2021 there was only one downward revision with yearly totals being revised upward by 2 million jobs for the year. The country was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Antoni questioned how the jobs numbers could be going the same negative direction, and by a considerable magnitude, if there is no economic downturn.

“These patterns in the data clearly indicate that something is not quite right with the number crunching at BLS last year,” Antoni said.

The more the actual numbers are updated, the less opportunity Biden has to brag about his claims of economic success.

Key Takeaways:

• The latest jobs numbers report undermined Biden’s economic bragging.
• About one quarter of the jobs reported last year were revised downward.
• A federal researcher questioned the accuracy of federal “number crunching.”

Source: Daily Caller