2024-12-17
We are discussing America here, but that is neither to accept nor deny that the UK's Office of National Statistical is beyond reproach.
The Biden administration is rather a special case, since America never does things by halves, so if they are good they can be very good, but equally if they are bad they can be very bad indeed. Churchill is said to have opined that America always does the right thing in the end, but only after they have exhausted all possible alternatives ...
Still, outright gerrymandering of the figures to make the economy look rosy does seem to be a step too far.
"Estimates by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia indicate that the employment changes from March through June 2024 were significantly different" - read lower - "in 27 states compared with preliminary state estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Current Employment Statistics (CES)"
All this is an election year, although of course that is not relevant, since the administration may simply have been let down by its bean-counters.
"Maybe someone can calculate what the odds of that distribution occurring naturally are, but here is our guess: virtually nil"
It doesn't look good, but will something be done about it?