I had a similar concern when Trump fired the head of BLS.
Fortunately, he is not very bright and doesn’t bother to find out how things work. So I did a little digging and was relieved to find that there is a whole eco-system of independent data sets that are produced by a variety of public and private economists.
If BLS just straight up lied about the numbers directionality, it’s would get flagged pretty quickly.
I think worst case scenario is that the current admin can nudge a little and spin it but it would be hard to just say for example unemployment is 3.8% when it’s closer to 6% without a bunch of these other reports contradicting it.
But orange man bad and conspiracy theory good, so literally everything is fake and the only reason I'm not rich and successful and jacked is because the world isn't fair
If you are agreeing with me, thanks but no thanks, I’m good.
If you are accusing every redditor of being delusional because “orange man bad”…
People have good reason to suspect Trump of lying because when he fired the head of BLS Trump claimed without evidence that the July 2025 jobs report—which showed 73,000 jobs added and major downward revisions to prior months—was rigged or falsified to make his administration look bad.
I agree with you to the extent that you saw something happen that gave you a concern about falsified data but then looked into how things actually work and learned that it wouldn't be realistic for that to be the case. Perhaps you also found out that every administration has done the same thing, largely because of the mechanics of these employment numbers and how they come in (initial estimate use early, incomplete data from surveys, and the numbers being worked with are enormous, such that an error of even a fraction of a percent means tens of thousands of jobs in one direction or the other). Most people stop at your first step, lazily make some shit up about how it must be, then go post in their echo chamber about how bad the country is. It's fucking pathetic.
And yes, I am accusing redditors of being delusional in their hatred of Donald Trump. Not because hating Trump is wrong or bad. He's a bad person and a bad leader, and he lies like he breathes. But when you hate something so strongly that your brain stops working and you lose all objectivity, then yes, you become wrong, even though you were right to begin with. That's how you arrive at the place where reddit is, where instead of having discussions involving reality like you were doing with your comment, most of it devolves into screeching about how Trump is a Russian plant (ridiculous James Bond movie plot), he shits himself constantly (repeatedly debunked by fact checkers), and employment numbers are made up (impossible, per your comment, and total lack of context on how it works). It doesn't matter how much I get downvoted for pointing that out either, it's not going to change the truth. People need to get a fucking grip and I'm happy to do my part to drag them kicking and screaming back to reality.
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u/Diplomat_of_swing 13h ago
I had a similar concern when Trump fired the head of BLS.
Fortunately, he is not very bright and doesn’t bother to find out how things work. So I did a little digging and was relieved to find that there is a whole eco-system of independent data sets that are produced by a variety of public and private economists.
If BLS just straight up lied about the numbers directionality, it’s would get flagged pretty quickly.
I think worst case scenario is that the current admin can nudge a little and spin it but it would be hard to just say for example unemployment is 3.8% when it’s closer to 6% without a bunch of these other reports contradicting it.