Trump's Former BLS Commissioner Explains How Agency Collects Data Ahead Of Jobs Report

Watch Trump's Former BLS Commissioner Explains How Agency Collects Data Ahead Of Jobs Report - Forbes Breaking News on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Can you explain to us, the president said that the BLS commissioner rigged these numbers.

00:07What do you think?

00:08There's no way for that to happen.

00:10The commissioner doesn't do anything to collect the numbers.

00:14The commissioner doesn't see the numbers until Wednesday before they're published.

00:19By the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they're all prepared.

00:21They're locked into the computer system.

00:24The only thing the commissioner does on Wednesday is to kind of do the edits on the text.

00:28So there's no hands-on at all for the commissioner.

00:30I was commissioner, and I was sometimes locked out of the process of actually where the people were working in the building.

00:37So there's no way for doing that.

00:39What I think really upset the president on Friday were the revisions to May and June, big revisions.

00:46But that's because, like, every time we publish on Friday, there are revisions to the previous two months.

00:53This is a survey, and a survey has sample returns.

00:57You know, people have done surveys.

00:58You know, answer your phone.

01:00It's basically like a poll.

01:01Yeah, it's like a poll.

01:02Okay.

01:03Not everybody in the country is asked the question, are you working or are you looking for work?

01:08Just a handful.

01:09And businesses, about 600,000 businesses.

01:12Well, they don't all get their returns in on time.

01:15I would like them all to come in at a time, but BLS keeps the door open for two more months to get more information.

01:22So what you saw on Friday was the effect of trying to do a better job, getting more information.