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The Books Can't be Cooked/Manipulated on Unemployment Numbers
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The monthly employment report is released by the BLS, an independent statistical agency within Labor that is staffed by career civil servants, many of whom have served throughout both Democratic and Republican administrations. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis is in charge of GDP. Both agencies are guided by the same directive and rely on similar security measures to keep their data secret until the embargo lifts.
Each agency compartmentalizes the raw data. For the employment report, for example, most BLS analysts only see the data for a single sector, such as health care payrolls. Job growth in different sectors varies, making it difficult to get a clear picture of the headline number from a single category. In September, for example, health care picked up 44,000 jobs. Manufacturing, on the other hand, lost 16,000.
Doors to offices where embargoed data is reviewed are locked, and even within those offices, the data is kept in safes, BLS press officer Gary Steinberg said. Just a handful of employees gather in closed-door meetings to compile the final reports. At the BEA, attendees of these meetings adhere to a superstition: They don’t speak the GDP number aloud, said Thomas Dail, a BEA spokesperson. Materials from the meeting are secured; even scraps of paper bearing doodles and ink cartridges are locked up until the BEA embargo lifts.
The Labor Department has had strict policies in place for decades, said Keith Hall, who served from 2008 through this year as the thirteenth commissioner of the BLS. “BLS is keenly aware—I was certainly keenly aware when I was commissioner—that this is data that has a lot of potential value,” he said.
By Hall’s estimate, more than 100 people are involved in the BLS process from collection to its final analysis for the president. It would be very difficult for the administration to manipulate such a crowd.
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Each agency compartmentalizes the raw data. For the employment report, for example, most BLS analysts only see the data for a single sector, such as health care payrolls. Job growth in different sectors varies, making it difficult to get a clear picture of the headline number from a single category. In September, for example, health care picked up 44,000 jobs. Manufacturing, on the other hand, lost 16,000.
Doors to offices where embargoed data is reviewed are locked, and even within those offices, the data is kept in safes, BLS press officer Gary Steinberg said. Just a handful of employees gather in closed-door meetings to compile the final reports. At the BEA, attendees of these meetings adhere to a superstition: They don’t speak the GDP number aloud, said Thomas Dail, a BEA spokesperson. Materials from the meeting are secured; even scraps of paper bearing doodles and ink cartridges are locked up until the BEA embargo lifts.
The Labor Department has had strict policies in place for decades, said Keith Hall, who served from 2008 through this year as the thirteenth commissioner of the BLS. “BLS is keenly aware—I was certainly keenly aware when I was commissioner—that this is data that has a lot of potential value,” he said.
By Hall’s estimate, more than 100 people are involved in the BLS process from collection to its final analysis for the president. It would be very difficult for the administration to manipulate such a crowd.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/economy/experts-dismiss-claims-of-cooking-books-on-jobs-data-20121005?page=1