4 ms·

If the government-approved numbers are this bad the real ones must be catastrophic.

• ck2 8mo ago
  hey I know lets spend billon per day on war of choice for no reason for rest of year and make gas $5/gallon so even people who don't drive have to pay more for trucks going to stores and delivery oh and make old/ill people somehow work until they are sixty-five to get any food or medical assistance that should fix things right up xmas economic implosion inbound
  • actionfromafar 8mo ago
    But at least Russia can fund their war better, right?
    • ck2 8mo ago
      Are you referring to where he just eased sanctions on Russian oil so they can sell again at high profit to fund their own war of choice? I figured he was going to drop sanctions on them sooner or later but that was quite the ploy The problem is zero consequences for anything he does now, completely isolated, so it's one country destroying choice after another https://reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/comments/j6z8eh https://reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/comments/j6z8eh
      • dnemmers 8mo ago
        I believe at least part of the rationale for allowing sales, short term, is to try and reverse the oil price increase, due to the Iran war.
  • sailfast 8mo ago
    Dear leader says prices are down. So they are down. He tells me I’m doing better than ever before. So I must be.
  • bdangubic 8mo ago
    The state of the Country is fully on display here when comments like this one are getting downvoted consistently... quite amazing (and sad) to see
    • tenahu 8mo ago
      How can one downvote on HN?
      • latexr 8mo ago
        You need to reach a minimum karma threshold (501, if I recall) before you get the ability to do so.
      • rpcope1 8mo ago
        First rule of Fight Club is...
      • Bender 8mo ago
        Some useful information not documented on HN [1] not my repo [1] - https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
• ajross 8mo ago
  Honestly, no. The administration is not subtle with its lies. If they want to fib, they do it out of POTUS's mouth at a podium, and it's a huge whopper that just dares the nasty liberal media to try to call it out. The strategy works for them, and they apply it repeatedly. They don't just fudge numbers a bit. This is a bad number for them because it's probably the correct (or best available, really) number produced by the existing bureaucracy that does things via the same rules it always has. Doesn't mean it won't be revised later (note that there's also a big downward revision in this report of previous numbers). But it's likely trustworthy. Along with Big Lie polemics, you also need to recognize that the administration is very sensitive to market motion (sort of a variant kind of democracy, I guess). And markets HATE when the government messes with the economic regulatory aparatus.
  • TheGRS 8mo ago
    They quite publicly fired an official related to reporting these numbers, and they also decided not to publish numbers during the government shutdown nor backfill them. I have zero trust the administration isn’t fudging things.
    • derektank 8mo ago
      Said official herself (Erika McEntarfer) has said that you should continue to trust the numbers, “You should still trust BLS data. The agency is being run by the same dedicated career staff who were running it while I was awaiting confirmation from the Senate. And the staff have made it clear that they are blowing a loud whistle if there is interference”[1] [1] https://open.substack.com/pub/stayathomemacro/p/trust-in-numbers https://open.substack.com/pub/stayathomemacro/p/trust-in-num...
  • idiotsecant 8mo ago
    They absolutely fudge the numbers. Summary below, but in short every possible mechanism for keeping economic reporting numbers honest is being systematically dismantled. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/11/nx-s1-5323155/economic-data-reliability-trump-howard-lutnick https://www.npr.org/2025/03/11/nx-s1-5323155/economic-data-r...
• btown 8mo ago
  In all seriousness, I’m unsure that official job numbers (even if they weren’t intentionally distorted, which is a big if these days) have caught up with the gig/creator economy. If a person making ends meet with food delivery and a few dollars of ad revenue is classified as “self-employed,” is that the same level of stability and ability to keep up with cost-of-living increases (which may outpace traditional inflation) vs. self-employed freelancers with clients? Which isn’t to cast shade on those paths, but it’s meaningful to the metrics we choose to follow.
  • el_nahual 8mo ago
    Yes, they have. The BLS actually tracks a number of different "unemployment" numbers, whose definition you see here [0]. The "official" unemployment number, the one now reported as 4.4%, basically only counts the "percent of people actively looking for work that can't find it, who have been looking for work for more that 15 weeks. The number you are trying to capture is what the BLS calls "U-6". That number is defined as: > total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers. In other words, anyone that would like more work but can't get it. I encourage you to read the entire definition and footnotes at the link I shared. It's very interesting! Right now U-6 is at 8%. During the 2007 recession it peaked at about 17%. [1] [0]: https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE
    • btown 8mo ago
      Thanks for bringing this up, and you're right that this is closer. I still think it's imperfect, because a gig economy worker who works 35+ hours per week would be considered "employed full time" (footnotes, https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat36.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat36.htm) and as far as I know would not be included in the U-6. I don't have a more recent statistic, but in 2018 half of Uber rides were provided by drivers working 35+ hours per week: https://www.epi.org/publication/uber-and-the-labor-market-uber-drivers-compensation-wages-and-the-scale-of-uber-and-the-gig-economy/ https://www.epi.org/publication/uber-and-the-labor-market-ub... So while I was perhaps too harsh on the work of the BLS, I do think that newer metrics are warranted.
• Analemma_ 8mo ago
  I can't find it now because Bluesky's search function is so dreadful, but after the January jobs report was better than expected, a bunch of people were assuming the BLS must have fudged the numbers. Then the person who was actually fired from the BLS by Trump actually showed up and posted saying that, as far as they can tell from talking to "surviving" colleagues, the blowback after that firing was so intense that there hasn't been further pressure on the BLS and that as far as they can tell, the numbers are still good. If someone can find this post, please link it here, because this person was no fan of Trump and I considered it a matter of considerable personal integrity that they looked into the matter and determined they still stood by the numbers, instead of taking the easy win on Bluesky and denouncing them. (There is a separate issue where for the last 2-3 years, the BLS's later revisions to jobs numbers have been almost entirely downward, instead of evenly distributed like they used to be, indicating some kind of systemic methodological issue, maybe some secular change in how labor markets work post-covid. The February numbers could mean maybe they've fixed the problem, or maybe they haven't and this will later get revised to something even worse. But that issue predates Trump.)
  • h2zizzle 8mo ago
    >There is a separate issue where for the last 2-3 years, the BLS's later revisions to jobs numbers have been almost entirely downward, instead of evenly distributed like they used to be, indicating some kind of systemic methodological issue, maybe some secular change in how labor markets work post-covid The Biden administration pulled out all the stops (without resorting to outright corruption, like Trump) to get ahead of the fact that we briefly entered a recession in 2022 (which would not have been as brief if it had been correctly identified as the recession that it was). They changed how they calculated inflation around this time, which coincided with headline staying below 10% even though it had been trending higher and likely was much, much higher for parts of the country. I have no issue with the notion that they also changed the way that they calculated job growth and then, surprise, numbers are good (but then get revised down later when no one cares anymore).
    • Analemma_ 8mo ago
      I actually do pay reasonably close attention to how inflation and unemployment are calculated, and read the BLS and Federal Reserve reports beyond just the headlines from mass media outlets, and I can say this confidently: nothing you just said is true, you made up that whole paragraph out of nothing. It reads like a copypasta from RW Twitter reply guys.
• phkahler 8mo ago
  >> If the government-approved numbers are this bad the real ones must be catastrophic. Sadly my first thought was not to trust this report. The article even notes further down: >> The US central bank would typically respond to a weakening labour market by cutting borrowing costs, in hopes of giving the economy a boost. Our fearless leader has put enormous pressure on the Fed to lower interest rates from day 1. They keep refusing, and following the data so it makes sense (if you don't care about reality) to alter the data to get the desired result.
  • csomar 8mo ago
    With oil prices now 90+, there is 0 chance of an interest rate decrease even with a new Fed chair.
    • NewJazz 8mo ago
      Lol we will see... UE can spike real quick.
  • downrightmike 8mo ago
    They always revise the numbers later after the headlines fade.
    • kranke155 8mo ago
      Some of the biggest revisions on record.
• beezle 8mo ago
  Please keep in mind two things with the NFP report: 1/ the confidence interval for the monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 122,000 2/ the report is based upon a survey of establishments. There is no obligation to respond and many do not and ability/desire to respond may be impacted by company health as well.