Former GE CEO, Jack Welch, suggested in a tweet Thursday morning that the federal government's Labor Department cooked the statistics to come up with a 7.8% unemployment number. Welch implies, the number represents "Chicago" politics.
The general reaction to this claim appears to have been such an accusation is insulting to the professionalism of the Department. Well, hold on a minute.
First off, the employment numbers, business stats, GDP change, etc., are usually revised a few months later when more complete survey data provides more accurate measurement, and the original stats are revised quietly. Is it impossible to imagine that the Department heads decided to go with a suspect statistic, because, they could plead, a revision is traditionally made later?
Second, we do not know the bureaucratic protocols involved in the making of the statistics.
Why is it impossible to imagine that, somewhere along the line of acquisition of data and analysis of it, someone analyst didn't cook the inputs? Do we think that every single employee is so objective and professional that they would not cheat for their Chief Executive? Have no such occasions, in which an lower level bureaucrat self-initiates action to further the President's political fortunes, occurred?
Such suspicions are especially relevant when other data series on the economy do not show the effects of such a great drop in unemployment. Surely, investigation into the making of these statistics is called for.
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