The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), part of the Department of Labor, released the employment number for November 2021 this morning. 210,000 new jobs created, when economists had expected more than twice as many. Why? The Delta virus? A slowing economy?
The answer is simpler, Josh reports over at TPM. The number is almost certainly way wrong.
So far this year every month but one has been revised higher after the fact, often by magnitudes far greater than in the history of counting this number. September was initially 194,000. Now it’s revised to 379,000. August was initially 235,000. Now it’s revised to 483,000. A number of other months have been upward revised by 100,000 or more.
Maybe it’s got something to do with COVID. Maybe it’s more obscure—a shift to job sectors with different reporting characteristics. Nobody thinks its BLS getting lazy or political. But for whatever reason, today they are unable to produce a reliable number for employment one week after the month ends.
So don’t! Release the number a month later, when it is much more accurate. If some Congressional mandate requires the immediate number, surround it with all sorts of warnings about “preliminary” so that people wait for the number you think is reliable.
We are very close to having the major media start revising these numbers on their own (“Based on history, that 210,000 number is likely to grow to 420,000 once the BLS double-checks...”) That does nobody any good.
Secretary Walsh, it’s your department and your job. Fix the process; give us credible numbers.