US Jobs Statistics Allegedly Manipulated Prior to Obama Re-election in 2012

The official "knee jerk" response has been to always deny and to call for investigation on charges of statistical manipulation.

From the Bloomberg:

There is no sign U.S. jobs statistics have been compromised by broad-based employee fabrication of data, according to the Census Bureau.

“We have no reason to believe that there was a systematic manipulation of the data described in media reports,” the agency said today in a statement.

An article in the New York Post alleged employment figures heading into the 2012 presidential election were manipulated. Under pressure from supervisors to boost response rates in the Philadelphia region, Julius Buckmon, a former Census Bureau employee, said he made up information for people he couldn’t reach two years before the 2012 election, according to the Post.

The newspaper, citing an unnamed source, then said the practice went beyond a single employee, escalated in the year of the election and continues to this day. Attempts by Bloomberg to locate Buckmon were unsuccessful.

The US congress has been reported to open an inquiry on this matter.

The link to the NY Post here

If true, then this would validate Jack Welch, former chief executive officer of General Electric Co. who in October of 2012 raised eyebrows when he went on air to question labor statistics saying that the numbers “defied logic”

This adds to the number of growing instances as in EU, Asia, Japan, China, Argentina among the many where fabricating statistics has been a political ploy. Even in the Philippines, I recently quoted an admission by a BSP official on the credibility of domestic CPI data.

This also goes to show why the public should always be leery or skeptical of the accuracy of government statistics since they can be or has been used to reflect on political agenda or the self-interests of political agents rather than the actual state of the economy. The worship of statistics is like the worship of untruths