Firing the Data-Collectors
Plus: IVF about-face, Corporation for Public Broadcasting to shut down, and more...
Jobs numbers make it all come together: "I have been a bit mystified by the economic data over the last few months. With the combination of tariffs, inappropriate fiscal expansion, immigration crackdowns, and persistently elevated long-term interest rates, why had we not been seeing significant drag on job growth?" asks Josh Barro at Very Serious. Recent jobs numbers have made that less mystifying: July growth was terribly weak, while May and June numbers were revised significantly downward, with 258,000 fewer jobs in those months than first reported by the Labor Department.
"As Jason Furman wrote before these jobs numbers came in, it seemed tariffs were already boosting inflation and dampening growth at the margin, albeit not to a sufficient degree to tip the economy into recession," continues Barro. "Now the jobs numbers are also showing significant weakness, even though they're not yet showing the bottom falling out of the labor market. The last remaining bullish economic indicator is the stock market. Like Furman, I can't explain why stocks are doing so well in spite of everything. But the rest of the economic data appears to be aligning with the idea that the economy is weakening."
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Interestingly, something appears to be happening at the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Trump announces he has directed his team to fire the Commissioner of Labor Statistics.
"Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes." pic.twitter.com/MdFMwnNH77
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 1, 2025
Plenty of people are arguing that Trump is behaving like an authoritarian. "This is the kind of thing you would only expect to see in a banana republic," said Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve (and former treasury secretary). But this take seems reasonable to me:
The gap between positive report to negative revision was staggering — though press didn't always cover the revision (surprise!). People should be reassured that there's accountability here. This is a Good thing. Keeping someone on with this record would be Bad.
— J.P. Freire (@JPFreire) August 1, 2025
Without endorsing Trump's conspiratorial speculations that the numbers are being deliberately manipulated to hurt him and favor Democrats, I do think you can make a case that the bureaucrats collecting this data have been doing a poor job.
So how exactly does the BLS currently collect this data?
"The BLS collects jobs data in two separate surveys," reports CNN. "The first is done in part with old-fashioned door knocking. Survey takers go home to home throughout the country asking people for their employment status and their demographic information. A second survey, known as the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey, is collected from thousands of businesses and government agencies using a variety of methods: via telephone, internet surveys, and—for large corporations—through an automated data transfer." Then the guesswork comes in: "BLS staff prepare the data for a monthly report by estimating America's employment, hours worked and earnings. To extrapolate the data for the entire country, BLS economists add in some educated guesswork, based on seasonal hiring trends. The BLS also smooths out the data with calculations known as seasonal adjustments to avoid huge spikes and dips in data each month."
It's very possible their current data collection practices are insufficient, or their calculations are routinely misunderstanding something about the labor market and how firms are behaving. And revisions are not without precedent, but it's true that recent revisions have been…massive. "Between 1979 and 2003, the average monthly revision was 61,000 jobs," adds CNN. "Since 2003, the average monthly revision is only a slightly more accurate 51,000 jobs." So the May revision of 120,000 jobs and the June revision of 133,000 jobs are comparatively rather substantial.
IVF about-face: "The White House does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for in vitro fertilization services, two people with knowledge of internal discussions said, even though the idea was one of President Donald Trump's key campaign pledges," reports The Washington Post, whose chief economics reporter characterizes this as "another apparent L"—loss—"from this admin for the conservative natalists."
This is an example of Trump reneging on a campaign promise—one made in an attempt to curry favor with people who may have been bothered by justices appointed by him overturning Roe v. Wade. But I'm not sure it's such a loss for the conservative natalists, many of whom, if religious and staunchly pro-life, have objections to IVF that stem from the procedure's discarding of embryos.
"The government is going to pay for it, or we're going to get—we'll mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We're going to do that," Trump said in August of last year. "We want to produce babies in this country, right?" Emphasizing the importance of reversing the birth rate decline is a good thing to my mind, but shifting away from the government is going to pay for it or we need to foist more mandates on insurances companies is probably a good thing if the idea is to turn down the political temperature when it comes to IVF.
Scenes from New York: New York City is a beach town. Here's how the city's lifeguard coordinator spends his days.
QUICK HITS
- The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, says budget cuts are forcing it to shut down. The majority of staffers will be dismissed by the end of September, with a few staying on until January "to ensure a responsible and orderly closeout of operations," per a statement.
- "The Federal Reserve resisted pressure from the White House last week and left its policy rate unchanged," writes Bloomberg's editorial board. "It was the right decision. As Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged, the case for a cut was a bit stronger this time than in June—and two of the Fed's policymakers, in rare dissents, voted to lower the rate by a quarter-point. For now, though, patience in relaxing the central bank's 'modestly restrictive' stance still makes sense. As Powell explained, the Fed is grappling with conflicting information and heightened uncertainty. Economic growth has slowed in recent months, the pace of hiring has cooled and data published after the Fed's decision showed that the unemployment rate edged up in July. Even so, inflation continues to run faster than the bank's 2% target (core inflation was 2.8% in the year to June), it's too soon to say how much the administration's new tariffs will push up prices, and last month's jobless rate of 4.2% still squares with policymakers' 'maximum employment' mandate."
- Inside the Democrats' fight over school vouchers.