Sens. Collins, Cassidy seek answers from BLS on reporting of jobs data – Financial Regulation News

U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA) are seeking answers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on its consistent failures to produce accurate national jobs data.

Each month, BLS produces economic data showing national job gains and losses, as well as changes in the unemployment rate. It also produces data on the industries that were significantly impacted by the jobs numbers.

The lawmakers said the agency has consistently produced unreliable employment data that is heavily revised weeks or months later.

“BLS’s inability to produce initially reliable data—especially when that data has broad market-moving implications and often is used as indicia of the strength or weakness of the American economy—is unacceptable,” the senators wrote in a letter to the leaders of the BLS. “Even more confounding is why BLS continues to conduct its business in the same manner month after month when its initial data release is so often flawed.”

Collins and Cassidy pointed out that during the Biden-Harris administration, BLS revised its monthly jobs data 43 times, and 53 percent of the time the revisions reflected less job growth than the initial reporting. Specifically, the statistics were revised up or down by an average of 101,114 jobs per month. Between March 2023 and March 2024, the BLS revised its annual jobs numbers downward by a staggering 818,000 jobs, the largest revision to this annual data since 2009.

Under the Trump administration, BLS revised its data up or down by an average of 73,681 jobs per month. A majority of these revisions, 57 percent, reflected higher job numbers and better economic data than BLS’s initial reporting.

“BLS cannot continue to process and release data in the same manner it always has and expect a different outcome,” the senators wrote. “Whether BLS needs to implement changes to how it collects data or to the timetable on which it releases the data it collects, it is clear that something must change so that those who make economic decisions based on the data BLS provides are able to do so with a reliable understanding of the actual facts on the ground.”

The senators are seeing answers to a series of related questions by Nov. 28.