A shocking report in The New York Post accuses employees at the U.S. Census Bureau – which conducts monthly unemployment surveys for the government’s widely watched jobs report – of manipulating this data in the months leading up to U.S. President Barack Obama’s reelection.
“Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy,” the Post’s John Crudele reported this week. “And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.”
According to Crudele, the employee – Julius Buckmon – admits to the data manipulation, saying “he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.”
Each month, Census conducts approximately 60,000 in-person and telephone interviews as part of its “current population survey.” The employment data from this survey is fed to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) – the division of the Department of Labor responsible for publishing the nation’s monthly employment situation report.
Buckmon tells Crudele he “filled out surveys for people he couldn’t reach by phone or who didn’t answer their doors.”
In other words he fabricated survey respondents … and gave them fabricated jobs.
According to Crudele, “Census never publicly disclosed the falsification. Nor did it inform Labor that its data was tainted.”
The Labor Department has since launched an investigation into the claims.
“We have contacted the Census Bureau about this, and it has been referred to the Commerce Department inspector general,” a spokesman for the agency told The (U.K.) Guardian.
After the U.S. employment rate dropped from 8.1 percent last August to 7.8 percent last September, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch accused the Obama administration of manipulating the jobs data.
He wasn’t the only one …
Richard Manning of Americans for Limited Government – a former Department of Labor official – joked that Obama must have “hired infamous Iraqi Information Minister Baghdad Bob to calculate the unemployment rate.”
Looks like they were right …
While the nation’s unemployment rate has fallen since the nadir of the Great Recession, much of that decline is attributable to Americans giving up their search for gainful employment. That’s resulted in a steady decline in the labor participation rate – which tracks the percentage of working age Americans who are either employed or looking for a job.
In October, the labor participation rate stood at 62.8 percent – its lowest reading since March of 1978.
UPDATE: Crudele’s report has prompted calls for a Congressional probe of the alleged labor data manipulation …
19 comments
Most of what the government issues statistically is manipulated in some fashion. The whole monster is ruled by partisan politics and self interest.
If you believe any of what they issue you are a rube.
I think we should start calling Obama President Asterisk. Obama’s IRS targets conservative groups to try to prevent them from organizing and fundraising. The Census Burea and/or the Labor Department (both under the executive branch) were deliberately manipulating key economic data to try to help Obama’s reelection odds. And of course the palace guards in the mainstream press did all they could to protect Obama, including never digging into his serial lies about Obamacare.
I posted earlier a chart using the Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing how horrible the Obama economic “recovery” has been. The fact that at least some of these numbers have been fudged in his favor is even more astounding:
http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_LNS12300000_2000_2013_all_period_M10_data.gif
I think we should start calling him Impeached. But I respect that others have elbows too. :)
Shifty assisted with the census, and became suspicious of the “hacks” who were sent from Atlanta to provide guidance. There was a hinky smell about them and when some of their directives were questioned or challenged by others as being unnecessary, nonsensical, etc., we were told to shut up or get out. I called them, to myself, the screwball disfunctionals, and I still think they were assholes….
I was never “counted” in the last census. I never received a form and no census takers came to my door, at least not that I know of. Hey, it works for me, especially if the stories about census takers “marking” your front door with a GPS device were true.
When no one is home the location (usually on the porch or at the front door) is GPS marked. Empty homes and apartments are also marked. The results were to be given to your local 911 Center , but only the address and GPS.
The census takers were supposed to go back no more than three times, and if no one was there it was shoved up for follow-up phone calls or possibly letters. This was only done if the home appeared to have someone living in it. Vacant homes were noted as such.
If you didn’t get any contact from someone then he didn’t do his job and forged his work. He could have known you personally and marked “VACANT”….. hah, just kidding, CiC.
Just another scandle. It appears that it’s Obama’s master plan to have scandle after scandle come out so fast that no one can begin to investigate one, before another one comes out!
Mmmm Hmmm.
That could be part of a plan of misdirection on orders from his marionettenspieler. The best is yet to come if you think of all the things that have happened since he stepped in and list them like a flow chart. Shifty thinks that the end result is Lil’ Barry’s controllers shooting for absolute control, and the pressure is on him because people just don’t care for him or his slimy shit — and his days are numbered and that number is short……
The report does not say that jobs data was specifically manipulated to benefit Obama, it says that one person was caught making shit up, and an unidentified source saying it is more prevalent than that. There would have to be more information than that.
Census currently has six regions from which surveys are conducted.
The New York and Philadelphia regions, I’m told, had been coming up
short of the 90 percent.
Philadelphia filled the gap with fake interviews.
…
But, Buckmon says, he was never told how to answer the questions
about whether these nonexistent people were employed or not, looking for
work, or have given up.
That makes it sound like it was more out of laziness, that they didn’t want to have to do more work to get the 90%, or they just wanted to avoid looking bad for not meeting the 90% requirement. The phone call he talks about further reinforces this,
On the other hand, the director of the Census Bureau, Robert Groves, left in August 2012, which does make for an interesting coincidence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Groves_%28academic%29
I agree it does need to be investigated, but don’t jump the damn gun.
#commie #putz
Smirks, he’s told to dream up answers, it doesn’t take a genius to know if he makes the head honcho look bad with his made up answers he’s going to be pushed out, it’s passive aggressive and there was only one way that was going to come out, with a lower unemployment number. Come on, the last report before the election and everyone knows a bad number at that time would be very bad for the sitting president. BAD was done and on purpose, period.
The pressure from the hacks who were overseeing the folks at the local levels were putting tremendous pressure on them to perform. They used intimidation such as firing someone who made one thing out of many so they had an excuse. Then they threatened everyone else with the same. Does this sound familiar? Anybody know some of the history of Nazi Germany? Ok, some folks told them to keep their shit and just left.
What wrinkled my shorts was that there were some folks who truly needed the work to help support their families. You had to sign a daily time sheet and sign off lthat those were your exact hours and assignments. Everyone I knew was signing his time sheet even though he had more hours on the street. S
He was told to falsify information from his supervisors, and the Post’s source says he was not the only one. A single lazy employee making up stats without an agenda is certainly possible. A coordinated effort involving supervisors and multiple interviewers is pretty hard to peg to laziness.
And I am sure liberals would have given Bush the same benefit of the doubt and not rushed to judgment if his executive offices had been doing this type of thing.
Dude, what happened to you? I really miss your commentary and insight on Fitsnews.
This is interesting. The NY Post story was posted at 8:06 pm 11/18. Yet, the AP has not picked up the story. In fact, no corporate media outlets are reporting this story at all. I see a pattern. News stories are manipulated to add an air of incredibility. If a news story is detrimental to an orchestrated narrative, the corporate media declines to carry the story which is then discredited if alternative media carries the story. In fact, cue up the, “Murdock’s News Corp portfolio is not credible” narrative. Is this any way to run protect the First Amendment when partisan news outlets debilitate competing news outlets?
Maybe no one has picked this story up because it is totally bogus, and no news organization that still has a reputation left wants to touch it.
Unlike the conservative blogosphere.
Jobs Data Manipulated to Benefit Nim.
Bengaaaazzziiii!!
LoL! Who cares as long as it drives the wingnuts crazy. Fuck ’em!
Just another manufactured outrage for the benefit of the teaturds