Could ancient aliens have helped build the pyramids? Absolutely!
EJ Anthony Link article We note that Senators Roger Marshall (R-KS), Ted Budd (R-NC), Rick Scott (R-FL), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have called for a BLS investigation into the interim benchmark revisions.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), who is leading the movement, said the public deserves an investigation into whether the numbers were intentionally altered to boost the Harris-Biden administration.
“Using taxpayer money to deceive the American people for political gain is an outrageous betrayal and one of the reasons the American people have completely lost faith in this administration,” Marshall told the Post.
Dr. Antoni should know better: below is a plot of benchmark revisions over time, expressed as a percentage (after all, employment has been growing over time).
Figure 1: Interim benchmark revisions, as a percent of initial employment estimates (blue). Red dashed line in election years. Source: UK Health and Safety Executiveand the BLS Interim Benchmark Revision Releases for individual years.
A downward revision of 0.5 ppt is less than two standard deviations from the mean of a -0.1 ppt revision (the standard deviation is 0.26 ppt), meaning that the downward revision is not statistically significant at the 5% msl.
Also note that if the BLS were falsifying its numbers before an election, we would expect to see systematic positive revisions in election years (shown by the dashed red line).
So while you can criticize the BLS on methodological grounds (if you’re not happy with the birth-death model used, suggest a better one), blaming the motives of the professional staff of a nonpartisan statistical agency seems especially reprehensible coming from a qualified PhD economist who should know better. (Personally, I think the BLS will likely revise employment upwards in the final benchmark because (1) the QCEW numbers used to calculate the interim benchmark are likely biased, and (2) the fact that the interim benchmark revision to private NFP from CES is not reflected in the ADP-Stanford series (the latter does not rely on the QCEW or birth-death model).)
Dr. Antoni has spoken to Senator Barrasso, Jack Welch, Former Congressman Alan WestZero Hedge.
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2024/09/ej-antoni-heritage-foundation-some-suspect-government-statisticians-are-committing-lies-of-omission
