On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics claimed a “technical issue” caused delays in releasing jobs data last week. Incidentally, jobs data is a campaign issue that could conceivably impact the November elections.
It’s surely just a coincidence.
A hitch related to time-stamping prevented the job revisions data from being released on time, according to information provided by the Labor Department, which the BLS is part of. Outside parties, the BLS said, then got the data because of a lack of communication within the agency over how to respond to public inquiries.
The agency has taken several steps since last week to prevent similar problems from occurring and notified the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General, which may spark an investigation.
The episode is at least the third in a series of missteps this year that critics argue may undermine faith in the agency.
Amazing that three cluster foul-ups in a year could undermine faith in the agency. I mean, the very idea!
What is even more amazing is that anyone has any faith left in the various alphabet-soup federal agencies at all.
See Related: Here’s How the Biden-Harris Admin. Completely Rewrote Reality to Dismiss Your Concerns About the Economy
Think You Can Retire? Seniors Who Have Had to Go Back to Work in Kamala’s Economy Say ‘Think Again’
Here’s what makes this latest glitch so interesting:
The job revisions for last year and early 2024 appeared on a government website about a half-hour after their scheduled release time. But despite the delay, a handful of financial firms were able to obtain the information — which showed the largest downward revision to annual job creation in 15 years — before it was posted publicly.
The gaffe appeared to run counter to the nonpartisan statistical agency’s long-standing policies intended to prevent individual stakeholders, particularly financial traders, from gaining any edge by ensuring that information is made widely accessible to everyone at the same time.
Yes, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, like the Department of Labor that oversees it, is technically non-partisan. But it’s interesting indeed how this latest glitch withheld some labor statistics that are embarrassing to the Biden/Harris administration, just at the time that the presidential election season is kicking into high gear. This election, like most elections, will swing on the economy (It’s the economy, stupid), and for most folks, that means their jobs. The Biden/Harris administration has a lousy record on jobs, although they like to ballyhoo the post-COVID return to previous employment levels as somehow “creating jobs” instead of the country returning to normal after having been locked down for months. And what happened during that delay? Was someone, say, in the Harris campaign notified? So they might have a few minutes or hours to get their talking points in order?
Leave it to the terse format of X to make WaPo get to the nub of the matter.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday that a technical issue caused delays last week in the scheduled release of jobs data that carried major implications for the economy and the presidential election. https://t.co/bRsjGctNzy
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 28, 2024
Now, we have no way of knowing the motivations behind anyone at the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the Department of Labor. We cannot know that the delay in this release of data embarrassing to Kamala Harris (I doubt Joe Biden has any understanding of what’s going on at this point) was deliberate or, at least, that there was little urgency in finding and correcting the problem so that data could be released. There’s just no really good way of determining these things; we can’t read minds.
But it’s funny how these things always seem to benefit Democrats.
