The Fed has the responsibility of stabilizing prices and maximizing employment. Powell has held its benchmark rate for overnight loans constant this year, saying that Fed officials needed to see what impact Trump’s massive tariffs had on inflation.
The Fed has the responsibility of stabilizing prices and maximizing employment. Powell has held its benchmark rate for overnight loans constant this year, saying that Fed officials needed to see what impact Trump’s massive tariffs had on inflation.
One thing that sticks out to me is that Trump’s been badgering Powell to lower the Fed Rate practically since his first day back in office. Powell’s been reluctant, in large part because the jobs numbers looked strong and inflation numbers not-so-great (thanks to the threat of tariffs).
So then Trump threatens prosecution over the Fed building renovations and that kinda goes nowhere. And now we have this sudden, unexpected jobs report saying “Hey actually jobs numbers are bad!” And once again, Trump’s badgering Powell to lower the Fed rate.
The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
To be honest, this is just kind of how jobs reports have tended to work since Bush. It is kind of a consequence of both how reporting has failed to really contextualize how jobs reports tend to release in the US, as well as some (arguable) juking of the stats that make it easier to show positive growth in one area and then use the correctance to show the worse numbers.
Basically the Bureau of Labor and Statistics releases a monthly report, and at the beginning of the year it is based more on statistical modeling (“hockey stick growth! I got $5 today to mow the lawn, and $10 the next day to do it. If this rate keeps up, by next year I’ll be pulling in a couple billion.”), then they issue corrections as the actual data rolls in and either confirms or denies their modeling.
24 hour news (cable and online) got into the habit of basically reporting on the monthly reports like they are gospel, when realistically they are only reliable around November or December. I think the Fed encourages it too because it’s quietly one of the levers they can use to inspire foreign investment.
But, it is difficult to adequately describe how seriously the nerds at the BLS take their jobs. They gather and report real-ass data that you can go look at pretty much back to the 60s. This rhythm must be their compromise with the partisan pressures of the executive.
That’s not really the problem here though. The problem is that Trump and Republican policy is literally breaking the economy. Tarrifs cause inflation to go up while loosing jobs, while the feds policies can generally only address one at a time (lower interest rates -> jobs and inflation go up / increase interest rates -> jobs and inflation go down).
Ultimately Trump has screwed over the economy so bad, that in half a year he’s created an economic environment that the Fed can’t fix unless Trump walks back his trade war.
Edit: This is why the Fed is in a wait and see period, they expect things to get worse and don’t want to play their only card (rates decreases) too early. Trump continues to chip away at the economy and the Fed is about the only thing keeping us afloat.
250k is a bigger than normal swing. And I’m sure you can come up with a bunch of reasons why. But I find it curious, none-the-less.
It’s a bullet point to throw in a news cycle for a journalist department that’s increasingly automated, sure. But its also still a report composed by people overseen by an administrator with an agenda. When that administrator wants to soft-peddle bad news or front-load good news or try to shift the blame to some event or prior administration, they can fudge the reports one way or another based on how they estimate and aggregate their data.
Sure. And you can say the same thing about the NIH or the CPB or the FBI. But all these departments have been raided by DOGE.
We’ve recognized that DOGE layoffs may have compromised the accuracy of government data and that Elon Musk’s DOGE subordinates received approval to use software at the Labor Department that could be used to transfer large amounts of data, two employees said.
So there’s a real open question as to what is ending up in these final reports, how it is being produced, and what spin the current administration is seeking to put on it. No sleight to any desk jockey in the accounting department, but they don’t get to author the final draft.
Your last point is a fair one, but it’s also still important to mention because that specific strain of “it’s all political, who cares” is what creates tolerance for a lack of transparency and public accountability.
If anyone wants to take this problem seriously, it is also important to understand that even if what is released as an executive summary is deeply flawed, there are real civil servants there still trying to do the best they can with as little as possible. The data is all still published. We, as consumers of journalism, really should be pressuring editors to actually fix the way they uncritically gobble up and report anything that the DoL puts out.
Or, really, reporting on it ourselves and trying to learn and maintain a common set of journalistic ethics.
When people realize that attention is a currency, hopefully they will start being more careful where they direct it. Right now too many people consume news uncritically and as entertainment, and its giving attention to destructive content.
Time is Money is an age-old adage. But it’s one each of us has to conceptualize within our own material condition.
If there’s one thing I haven’t seen a lack of, its naval-gazing self-criticism. Whether its a FOX News host ranting about the Lie-brul Media or a TDS comic ranting about a FOX host ranting about the Lie-brul Media or a Crossfire host ranting about TDS ranting about FOX News ranting about…
It’s an ouroboros of criticism. But what comes of it?
The civil action that I see - the Palestine protests and “No Kings Day” marches, efforts to provide relief to migrants crossing the border deserts, anti-war rallies, the journalists collecting information on both the technical and social hazards of slipshod technology like AI and Crypto, the reports on consequences of climate change and political efforts to prevent it, efforts to implement BDS on public trusts and state spending priorities - are all getting bottled up by corporate obstruction and their members brutalized by federal police.
This isn’t an issue of attention, its one of action. There’s a strong popular demand for big socio-economic reforms that is being squelched by the bloated boot of the police state. So all we have left is people screaming out at one another from underneath.
… and almost no one actually checks the revisions to those numbers later, because the ruling class isn’t smart, they just have money, for whatever reason.
For the last 2 years, the BLS numbers have been so unreliable, so often revised by huge amounts, that they are just worthless, they’re more bullshit than the US media spent the better part of 2 decades saying half the numbers coming out of China were/are.