reader steve kopitz Writing about the employment numbers debate:
At the same time, I think it’s possible that both surveys are actually correct but give a misleading impression because we’ve misinterpreted the data. That still seems possible, although I’ve read others that CES was rigged to provide a more rosy picture going into the election.
The statement joins a long list of such allegations, such as, Senator Barrasso, Jack Welch, former congressman allen west, zero hedge, Mick Mulvaney,etc. All I can say is that if there was a conspiracy, they didn’t do it well.With the benefit of the January baseline revision, we can renew Our assessment of how poorly the alleged co-conspirators performed their jobs.
figure 1: Nonfarm Payrolls released Jan 2023 (red), Nonfarm Payrolls released Oct 2022 (blue), 000’s, sa Source: BLS via FRED.
Now, it may finally turn out (following another benchmark revision, the results of which are due in February 2024) that NFP in Q2 will be lower than indicated in CES. But in order to deceive voters in November 2022, this seems like a bad practice.
Anyway, before people start complaining that the data is manipulated, I would like them to read the BLS Technical Note on (1) Revision and Mean Absolute Revision, (2) Baseline Revision, (3) Calculation of Seasonal Adjustment Factor, (4) Apply population controls in CPS. Before they start citing the various series, I want them to understand the informative content (relative to business cycle fluctuations) of the CPS employment series vs. the CES employment series. This understanding can be gained by reading the work of people who understand the characteristics of macro data (Furman (2016); China Eastern Airlines (2017); Goto et al. (2021)).
From a sociological perspective, I do wonder why conspiracy theories are so attractive to some people.This is a scientific american article List some of the personality traits associated with holding on to conspiracy theories.
