The BLS Can't Be Replaced by the Private Sector
90 comments
·August 8, 2025jacobyoder
hypeatei
I understand why articles like this are written and why we have these conversations but it all feels like we're sane washing this administration. Any other administration (especially a Democrat) firing the head of BLS due to unsavory numbers would be a scandal on its own. Yet, we're seven months into this one with multiple corruption scandals flooding the zone. It just seems crazy that we're here justifying basic concepts of government/public service and not outright calling this out for what it is.
freedomben
> but it all feels like we're sane washing this administration
This is not a defense of the admin or their actions, but if there's something we should have learned well over the past 100+ years of history, it's not to assume insanity on the part of people who disagree with you. It feels good to assume that we are so correct that anyone disagreeing with us must be insane, but it's a deeply unproductive (and often counter-productive) way to interact with people.
Personally, I think they think that places like the BLS are stacked with "deep state" people that are trying to sabotage the current administration. I think that's mostly absurd, but they don't, and without evidence either way it's a matter of opinion (I personally lean heavily on things like Hanlon's Razor and trying to gauge "likeliness" rather than assuming the best or worst). If you believe as they do, then cleaning house is not only good but necessary, so the actions aren't insane. If we don't try to (in good faith) understand their beliefs/motivations, and just assume they are just randomly pulling triggers, not only will we only further entrench partisan divides (nothing alienates somebody more than feeling they aren't being properly understood), but we hinder our own ability to predict and prepare for the future.
amanaplanacanal
For something like this, all the data are there. They show their work. The administration could try to check and see if the numbers are correct, but they don't.
breakyerself
I think you're giving them too much credit. I don't think they care if the numbers are legit. They care about the optics. They're happy to lie about what they believe if it fits the optics they want to project.
hypeatei
I'm not saying MAGA supporters are insane or that Trump himself is insane. I'm merely pointing out that the response to the extraordinary levels of corruption in this administration is insane along with the actions themselves considering what scandals plagued previous administrations.
You can try to steelman their view all you want, what we're seeing is bold-faced corruption: Trump coin crypto investor dinners, Trump mobile, receiving a $400M jet from Qatar, Tech executives donating to him in various ways to curry favor, and revoking security clearances from law firms who represent things he doesn't like. Just to name a few.
lubujackson
Luckily, we don't need to "try in good faith" to understand their motivations. They published a manifesto about it (Project 2025) and are systematically going down that list of sweeping changes. These changes don't happen in a bubble.
wat10000
I think they think that government is inherently bad (with the exception of the military and certain law enforcement) and reducing it is automatically good. I think this because I heard Rush Limbaugh saying it for three hours a day every day for years. It’s not hard to figure out their motivations. Just listen to them. Understanding those motivations can be tough, due to a combination of very different values and a reliance on various facts that happen to be untrue, but you can at least figure out the first level pretty easily.
mfcorgi
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throwanem
Right. That's a good deal of what gets them away with it. You have to crush this stuff while it's small.
piva00
Unfortunately there are lots of people on the sidelines that watch them screaming "censorship!", "persecution!", "injustice!" and fall for it. Any act against them is met with whining and fake outrage, and it works politically.
You can see this in action even in here, a forum where most people are more well-educated than 90% of the global population, they still swallow those cries as if this administration is the victim.
What is even more amusing and weird is how much the same side likes to scream "stop being a victim" while continuously playing into victimising themselves.
alemanek
Exactly, it drives me insane that people are still thinking this administration is in any way acting in good faith. The argument you quote above is assuming an awful lot of good faith when this administration continually lies and violates court orders.
Hell they lied about Trumps weight and height on his physical.
noitpmeder
Exactly. Instead of battling with their own internal departments when they show lack-luster numbers in good faith, they can just blame the "agendas" of the non-blessed private sector companies who show the same data.
Even better, they can exult the virtues of select private sector companies who show "good" "approved" data.
What? No, no conflict of interest that members of the President's immediate family happens to hold board seats in those "approved" companies.
StopTheWorld
Should point out this is not the first time the BLS came under serious fire, politically. When the Republicans regained control of the Senate in 1995, they set up a commission (Boskin commission) that said inflation had been overstated, and henceforth cut Social Security cost of living adjustments.
rtkwe
Cuts will continue until the statistics improve and match the desired narrative! Wish that was a /s but it's just what's happening now and happened then.
root_axis
Presumably private firms will become a necessary component of economic projections since BLS statistics will be less trustworthy going forward.
dv_dt
We have been seeing news reporting, media, and education private organizations knuckling under from pressure by the administration - is there any reason to believe that we would not see the same from data reporting companies
root_axis
Fair point, but private organizations would at least have a financial incentive to give accurate numbers since that's they're business, if they earn a reputation of unreliability then there'd be no reason to pay them, you could just trust the government numbers for free.
jeffhwang
There's significant evidence contradicting this hypothesis. See industry analysts like Gartner, IDC, etc. who all ask tech firms to "pay to play" for better rankings in their reports. As well as the ratings agencies like Moody's, S&P's, and Fitch during the 2008 financial crisis. These ratings agencies were paid by the banks selling CDOs, MBS, and other debt derivatives that were especially tied to the US housing market. The agencies were incentivized to not downgrade those products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agencies_and_the...
phkahler
>> Fair point, but private organizations would at least have a financial incentive to give accurate numbers since that's they're business
Private organizations will quickly start providing numbers that their customers want to see. Remember the risk ratings agencies prior to 2008? Yeah, finance guys want accurate risk assessments internally, but they always want good ratings on the stuff they're selling. Good ratings are a lubricant on transactions and since ratings are paid for by people making transactions there is more pressure in one direction.
elictronic
You pay for the business that provides the numbers you want. Accuracy is desired only in setting a baseline to be below. Reducing social security is the desired outcome not accuracy.
rtkwe
> financial incentive to give accurate numbers since that's they're business
The Trump admin has already shown a complete willingness to exert financial pressure on companies and organizations to compel compliance and our hypothetical private BLS replacement is not magically insulated from those pressures and threats.
> you could just trust the government numbers for free.
They're clearly in the middle of an attempt to cook the numbers to make the President look good.
JKCalhoun
Love it. You can then just pick the numbers from the firm that is saying what you want to hear.
root_axis
Yeah, it sucks for the public, but I assume if you're working in FP&A your company will pay for accurate statistics.
rtkwe
If those statistics are even available. Part of the employment numbers is a 60,000 household survey they conduct with the help of the census bureau I doubt there's going to be a consistent survey of that scale done on the private dime. Not to mention all the statistics businesses are required legally to submit to the government that these hypothetical private replacements would never have access to.
mcny
Wait, is that what credit rating agencies are? But credit rating agencies also need data from somewhere...
komali2
Or also, all firms will say what you want to hear, like modern ratings agencies already do. Because otherwise you won't ever shop at the ones who give you bad numbers, and market pressure will turn them all into a ratings shop.
mywittyname
"Bad" numbers are what companies are paying for.
If I'm a sailor paying for weather data related to my trip, I want to know about the dangerous weather.
derbOac
What I really would like to see is a historical trend analysis seeing whether BLS and nongovernment estimates (public or private) start to decouple about now.
If you have enough sources you presumably at least can start to make observations about which sources agree and which disagree.
Actually I presume something like this already exists, but I'm not an economist so I don't know.
vjvjvjvjghv
It will turn out like LIBOR and they will provide numbers that are producing profit for them.
softwaredoug
altcognito
(Great post/article!) I was so confused as to why you said counterpoint -- it is deep in the article, if at all.
> If the government’s jobs data is considered biased or unreliable, Wall Street will have other places to look. ADP reports figures on private payrolls, for instance. (And it also tells a bearish story: ADP showed a net loss of jobs in June, for instance.) Meanwhile, Gallup once tracked employment numbers on a weekly basis based on its large-scale surveys and could resume that effort. Or investment banks like Goldman Sachs might conclude they could have a competitive edge by tracking their own economic data.
But in the following paragraph he points out that the numbers aren't likely to be as accurate, comprehensive, or as reassuring as numbers generated by the government. Overall though it is a really good article worth a share of its own.
JKCalhoun
Doesn't seem to be a counterpoint?
ksherlock
With this and SCOTUS neutering Humphrey’s Executor (with Federal Reserve penumbras -- for now) I'm wondering if there will be a push in the future to establish a 4th branch (call it the deep state branch) to protect what should be non-political stuff like the federal reserve and BLS statistics. Like the judiciary, nominated by President, confirmed by the senate, funded by congress, impeachable, limited executive authority, etc.
andrewflnr
If we're launching a fourth branch of government, it should be explicitly aimed at enforcing the Constitution on the government. Having the judiciary try to do that and all the other adjudication is not working.
krapp
>I'm wondering if there will be a push in the future to establish a 4th branch (call it the deep state branch) to protect what should be non-political stuff like the federal reserve and BLS statistics.
Now you have four problems, as it were.
If the thesis is that the government can't be trusted to run its own affairs, then more government isn't a solution.
The actual "fourth branch" of government is supposed to be the people, either giving a shit and being engaged in their civic duty and not electing tyrants for entertainment value or to "own the libs," or else doing the other thing that Americans love to talk about doing.
actionfromafar
We thought we already had that for a bunch of stuff. Turns out, words on paper don't matter if Congress says nothing, the Executive goes rampant, and the SCOTUS either stays suspiciously quiet or gives an approving nod and wink here and there.
thisisit
Nate Silver has a piece on this: https://www.natesilver.net/p/trumps-jobs-data-denialism-wont...
The point being that revisions can be huge.
Given the climate created by the TACO-ing over tariffs its not surprising that these numbers are inconsistent.
And Trump keeps rewriting history about the numbers impacting elections. The last number before elections were the Oct numbers released on 1-Nov-24. That was abysmal at 12k jobs. Trump even complained about in his campaign speeches. But never let truth stand in the way of Trump and his supporters.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11012024.ht...
VeejayRampay
don't you worry, people in the public sector who want everything to be private will make sure that the BLS becomes shit enough that the private alternative will end up being appealing, we've seen that millions of times before
FrustratedMonky
With the shoot the messenger management style. Will the BLS ever be trustworthy again? What happens to markets when we can't trust any government statistics.
noitpmeder
Maybe the best move at this point is to move toward the BLS releasing all the raw data, but do not publish conclusions of their own? Then at least you have a central "unbiased" (if that's ever an actual state) agency responsible for collection, and leave it up to the more polarized outlets/statisticians/... to produce their own interpretations.
E.g. similar to Census data -- central data collection managed by govt, generalized anonymous data released for interpretation by anyone.
jfengel
The BLS gathers data to support its methodology. If the methodology were biased, having access to the raw data would not solve the problem. You could always claim "BLS is ignoring X".
null
nonameiguess
BLS already does this. It's not the most friendly interface, but you can directly query the database from its own website here: https://data.bls.gov/dataQuery/search. There's also a public API: https://www.bls.gov/developers/home.htm.
croes
That opens the door for lots of Wrong conclusions either lack of knowledge and maliciousness.
Statistics is often counterintuitive.
ThinkingGuy
See also: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)
noitpmeder
Sure, but the alternative is implicitly trusting the conclusions and interpretations the govt agency, who are (almost assuredly) humans with biases and not impartial robots.
It's a lot harder to attack general best practice statistic collection than it is to throw shade at an editorial. (not that certain administrations have issues attacking best practice science)
Issue also arise "easily" when the people charged with producing editorials are political appointees who are easy targets for subsequent administrations looking to shift blame. (seems we're at this stage now)
FrustratedMonky
Was on news yesterday, not sure if will happen. But Trump now also does not trust the Census and wants to do another one. So then what happens when we can't even trust the Census? And Totals are just gamed for Congressional seats.
elictronic
Its not that he doesn't trust the census. It's that they want a census marking US citizens vs. immigrants and illegal immigrants. It doesn't matter what they say so much, more what the end goal is.
Voting districts with higher populations receive a larger number of representatives. Currently we do not differentiate and legally the census defines these numbers which is very hard to change. If a census is run with these identified you have strong legal arguments with the "Current" Supreme Court to remove those immigrants/illegal immigrants from the representative totals.
The side benefit for this admin is many legal immigrants and some residents become more untrustworthy of those style questions and also do not answer again lowering representation in those districts further.
The Census is inaccurate if the goal is legally removing those people from the representative counts.
phkahler
Sounds like he doesn't want non-citizens to be counted. I'd rather they get counted, but maybe not used for determining seats in congress. It's kind of important to know how many people are present in an area and how that changes over time. Deporting illegals (like it or dislike it) is a separate thing from knowing how many people are in a state. Come to think of it, even if you're in favor of the deportations, you gotta have accurate data to know where to deploy resources. This desire to fake the data is just bizarre.
noitpmeder
Yeah we live in a crazy world. Honestly the fact that they don't trust it probably lends more credence toward their results -- it's extremely unfortunate that many of these agencies/systems/... live under the executive branch's whims and not as part of congressionally-mandated programs where it'd be more difficult to meddle.
The current 2-party system with fixed terms almost lends itself to promoting the political appointee system where entire department head counts turn over after a change in ruling party. If you're a "career" politician it's a no-brainer to fill these positions wholesale with people who are favorable to your world view, or donated to your administration, or spend lots of money at your hotel chain, ...
chasing
Yes, if the executive branch is trustworthy. We need to send a clear signal to the Republican Party that this sort of general behavior is not acceptable to Americans.
burnt-resistor
See, what they really need to do is release the politically-desired results in press releases while sending the real information using steganographic concealment in the page's logo. We must construct a Truman Show around Dear Leader for our own survival. /s
Previous users of this data will seek alternative, less precise signals elsewhere and likely use conservative, pessimistic guesstimates that will tend to be risk-adverse and not encourage expansion or investment.
bko
I mean, they already don't. Investors aren't stupid. Half of financial analysis is converting financial metrics from GAAP to other more meaningful structures that allow for proper forecasting and comparison. They spend billions on alternative data, trying to get an edge. They take nothing at face value.
I think the government stuff is a bit of a farce. They have an incentive like any other institution. For instance, inflation metrics are tied to trillions of dollars in terms of retirement benefits or other programs that are indexed to inflation. They have a gigantic incentive to play with the numbers. And I'm 100% convinced that they do. Does anyone believe food prices went up only 28% since pre-covid? Did something go from costing $4 to $5? No, most things close to doubled. But they're able to play with the numbers changing the basket (beef getting more expensive, we'll just swap that out with Tofu!).
amanaplanacanal
The basket is determined by what people actually buy, rather than what they would like to buy. And they are about two years behind, so the current basket is based on surveys done in 2023.
bko
So based on your experience, your food budget went up about 28% from pre-covid?
They have a lot of discretion, it's not formulaic. If it was, ironically it would be great to privatize! Here are the specs, and provide proof. Easy.
Here is from the world bank talking about tight and loose specifications:
> The CPI Manual refers to tight and loose specifications of product or item varieties. Tight specifications better facilitate the calculation of average prices and ensure comparability of items across countries, which is the aim of ICP price collection. Accordingly, the ICP stipulates strict requirements for the selection of items for pricing. These may include restricting the choice of brand or the size of an item by weight, volume, or quantity for example. For the CPI, tight specifications tend to be useful for electronic and other items with high rates of turnover.
Again, look at the facts:
1. It's complicated and not easily observable
2. There is some discretion
3. Politics and trillions in government spending is on stake
4. The numbers don't match personal experience
https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/2b29c1445d7fa006e5f4ca0...
redserk
What?
chasing
That’s the point. When Trump disagrees with facts the facts must be destroyed. When people are actually trying to solve problems they desire more information, not less.
derbOac
I think this pattern of behavior needs to be cast as incompetence and cowardice rather than immorality. Avoiding transparency, rigorous analysis, and competitive disagreement and review is a sign that one cannot make a convincing argument, or does not have courage to do so. I don't think they care about the morality of it, or see themselves as morally justified.
chasing
> incompetence and cowardice rather than immorality
Why not all three?
dionian
The problem is the BLS was putting out wildly incorrect facts
unethical_ban
That claim has never been backed up with evidence.
chasing
Yes, they had that bias towards reality that authoritarians can’t stand.
croes
They put out estimations and numbers based on reported data.
When the reported data changed they changed their data too.
That‘s not putting out wildly incorrect facts that’s putting out data based on currently known facts
emorning3
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TacticalCoder
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> Instead of firing the commissioner, the president should be giving the agency a raise in the form of a bigger budget. The goal should be to restore public trust in government statistics, not undermine it.
When you believe that government should not be providing many services, or doing most of what it currently does overall, why would you want to bolster trust in government statistics? Those statistics might contradict the administration, which is not a goal of the administration and its backers.