The Journal looks at BLS challenges that preceded firing of chief

Headed “Real Strains Inside the BLS Made It Vulnerable to Trump’s Accusations” online, a Journal article by Matt Grossman surveys the state of the Bureau of Labor Statistics prior to Trump’s firing of its chief, Erika McEntarfer, a move decried by economists and others.

Grossman describes BLS operations: “Each month the BLS surveys about 120,000 employers by phone or online to track the number of jobs in the economy, one of the world’s largest sophisticated monthly polls.” However, increasingly, “businesses—about 30% to 40% in recent months—don’t reply on time, up from under 20% a decade ago.”

Similarly, for individual households, a decade ago “BLS got responses from nearly 90% of families in the monthly household survey, a phone survey that determines the unemployment rate. In recent months, the figure has hovered below 70%.”

To include late-arriving data while maintaining timely reporting, BLS first estimates, then trues up those estimates in each of the next two months with “late replies and a revised seasonal adjustment.” It is the size of the job-growth restatement for May and June (downward by 258,000) that infuriated Trump.

However, “over many decades, revisions appear to be trending lower, according to an analysis by Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab and a former Biden White House economist.”

Meanwhile the agency strains against budget cuts and staffing constraints, stifling modernization.