because they're asked to always have rosier numbers. They've done this forever.

And it is telling that a certain flavor of partisan is finds it novel.

"No Matter Who Is President, Don’t Trust Government Data"

>There isn’t clear, undeniable evidence that officials at the BLS are editing or making up the jobs numbers that go out to the public. But it’s easy to see why people think that they are when you look back at the series of dramatic downward revisions the Bureau has made in recent years—especially during Biden’s presidency.

>The monthly jobs report is a recurring, previously scheduled drop that all major media outlets publish immediately. And whenever the headline number is dramatically large or at all higher than expectations, White House officials are quick to seize on the news to frame it as a consequence of their brilliant economic agenda. However, when these jobs figures consistently get revised at a later date—ostensibly due to new information—the revisions are rarely given the same level of attention by the media and are therefore only really noticed by the small subset of the population that is closely monitoring economic data.

>So, as an example, the Biden administration was able to loudly celebrate BLS reports showing dramatic job growth month after month. And when almost all of that growth was revised away in future reports, very few people noticed. The consistently inaccurate jobs reports gave the public the false impression that the economy was booming. The fact that this was due to the same kind of mistake apparently being made over and over again struck many as suspicious. And rightfully so.

>It is important to note, however, that this has continued after Biden left office. So if the BLS really was propping up initial jobs reports to make the economy look stronger under Biden, then by every meaningful indication, they have done the same thing under Trump—at least so far.

https://mises.org/mises-wire/no-matter-who-president-dont-tr...