Amazing how many here are so quick to lay the job numbers from last year at Trump's feet.

These are numbers compiled by this administration about a period immediately before Trump imposed some very very very economically stupid tariffs. It's quite suspicious to have such a big drop timed precisely as if to serve as a handy baseline to minimize the perceived impact of that idiocy; it comes out of an agency (BLS) whose previous head was fired for the sin of a displeasing report and was replaced with a commissar.

Note that survey data about the present is collected and aggregated piecemeal by a sizable bureaucracy and is thus hard for a dedicated ideologue to systematically revise without that leaking. However, when the data about today comes in below estimates the number of people involved in reconciling and dating the discrepancy to ascribe it to the past is much smaller.

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CaptWillard 2 days ago | parent [-]

Except the BLS numbers have been significantly revised on an ongoing basis for the last five years.

That's been so widely known that I have a really hard time believing that you guys don't know this, which makes me wonder why you're out here propagandizing like this.

You need to understand it's a net loss in persuasion, this gaslighting.

	▲	elgenie 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You’re attempting to argue that “revisions exist” is somehow strong evidence for the proposition that “no aspect of particular revision X was politically motivated”. That is gaslighting.

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brandur 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

To be fair I guess, the way the article is titled goes out of its way to mislead.

It would be quite easy to say "Added 911,000 fewer jobs from March 2024 to March 2025" or "the year starting in March 2024", but they are clearly aiming to deflect from the Biden admin by implying last year's revisions are the fault of the administration inaugurated in January 2025.

Judging by the comments here, it worked marvelously.

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jmull 3 days ago | parent [-]

> last year's revisions

To be clear, these are this administration's revisions, about what happened in the previous administration.

They also don't have much credibility. One problem with firing the economist running the BLS for reporting numbers the administration didn't like, and replacing her with a political loyalist is that no one will take the numbers the BLS reports seriously anymore.

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CaptWillard 2 days ago | parent [-]

" ... no one will take the numbers the BLS reports seriously anymore."

Pretty sure the last five years of significant consistent downward revision did that.

	▲	jmull 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The revision process is a normal part of reporting employment numbers. Since real-time actual numbers aren't feasible, they use approximate and correlated indicators initially and later revise when more solid data arrives. I can't tell what your point is though. It almost sounds like you're trying to say the initial BLS numbers have been politically manipulated for years since revisions have been consistently down for a while? Surely not, though, because that doesn't make any sense -- continuously applying an upward boost on initial numbers, only to have them consistently revised downward, for several years, would simply cause the system to adjust to the new norm. The absolute numbers have never been important; it's the relative numbers that count, so a consistently applied manipulation effectively becomes no manipulation over time. Anyway, there's a lack of proof of manipulation. Well, until recently, when the political manipulation was made publicly. OTOH, I suppose simple facts and logic aren't important in our post-fact world though.