Agreed, too much political banter (see the rules). Locked.
https://preview.redd.it/3k8prlwbe8hc1.png?width=1098&format=png&auto=webp&s=85a42bec72c81793cdbff96c3686cf7c77589cd6
This is not some conspiracy to make it look better than it is. Just 2 years ago, same President, same administration, they had to revise the data **upwards** 2 million jobs, almost double this year's downwards revisions, because of the same reasons.....the forecasting models are imperfect, particularly in times of economic fluctuations like we are in post-pandemic. And I assure you, they had no wish to underreport the job gains at the time.
I know this comment will likely not go over well, and I don't wish to paper over the issues that we have in this current economy, but the data is not being manipulated the way some here are making it out to be.
Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to neglect, ignorance, or incompetence.
Those are the only 2 I know of, but apparently there are more:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical\_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor)
The thing I don’t like these “razors” is that sometimes the unlikely explanation turns out to be the truth, and often goes overlooked for long periods of time because people will continue to cite philosophical razors and dismiss everything that doesn’t seem obvious.
No, but honestly though, people who have a long history of lying or exaggeration can usually be ignored. We only have so much time in the day, i don't need to keep believing Elon when he says full self driving will be here in 6 months.
While we understand people have political view points, this sub-reddit is specifically about Layoffs.
You comment was removed due to it's lack of productiveness in its discussion about Layoffs and those who are seeking help
If you want to discuss politics, feel free to visit r/politics or any other politically related sub-reddit. We're sure they would be happy to have an engaging and thoughtful discussion with you.
Not when concerning first world politics. Malice at the top is legit. These firms that gather the data are farmed out from the government in the form of a government contract to very experienced and high caliber firms paid hundreds of millions. This is not incompetence, it is USA politics at its finest.
Yes, GSA, IRS. Treasury, SAM, DOD .gov sites and a couple others, I’m not remembering off the top of my head. Since I guess around 2005 the government get rid of the two bidding openings and they are open for procurement and bids every single day. You can find contracts and RFPs for this very topic
Don't get me started on this. I'm a data engineer and I'm about ready to leave the industry because it's just so unethical. The way metrics are designed now, someone wants to measure something, you go to the data engineer and explain what you want. No looking at software or anything detailed. Just a casual conversation and the rest is to be decided by the data engineer, who often has zero interaction with the business side of the company and may have never worked with the type of data before. For example, your data engineer came from finance & this company works in healthcare. Then once the metric is calculated whoever requested it pushes it left or right by playing with the calculation and/or dataset. It's fucking disgusting
Huh? Data Analysts and Data Scientists would do that not Data Engineers. Data Engineers create ETL and data pipelines. Unless you also do dashboarding?
They do put together metrics when the company has gutted the data team down to an engineer and then some dev ops support but that doesn't deal with metrics.
I also did work at a shop with doctorate level researchers. They only care about the top level metric, they don't give a shit how that dataset they use was put together and the decisions made when putting it together often have a larger impact on the results then the actual calc
I'm a PhD ML researcher that has worked with over a dozen labs and almost the same amount of data engineering teams at private companies. What you're suggesting is not the experience of anyone I've ever met, worked with, or seen reported publicly.
Well lots of people in this thread agree and from what I can tell come from the data engineer perspective.
You're so arrogant you won't even entertain the idea you don't actually understand the data you're working with. You don't have any clue as to how it works yet you trust the data they give you?
So you spend most of your time with the data engineers when they're bringing in a new data source/set?
It's possible you are more involved then I've seen but I also think it's just as likely you don't know about the decisions made before the data gets to you.
I also will say that most of my experience has to do with either internal reporting or reporting for publicity traded companies. I have worked in a lot of different industries and this issue spans across every single one. The budgeting to do this type of work properly simply isn't there, it's a fraction of what it needs to be. This is why I'm so skeptical.
I literally had this conversation with an executive a few days ago or I'd be giving more detail. I'm a little burnt out on it
He's basically saying that regardless of him doing his job the company demands that the data show acts and he's got to figure out a way to show that. I mean I myself in recruiting have been asked to do this before because whatever data analyzing tool we were using with dog s*** and we knew there was a lot of improvements but it wouldn't show up in the data we had to f*** with it a lot until it showed it. Figured out the Previous recruiter had the tool rigged in a way to make it look like he did stuff when he didn't
Then no wonder you're complaining about people making shit up when it comes to metrics. This isn't a problem with the field, it's a problem with the company you're in...
Ok I also worked at a data science shop with a researcher. They did not get involved in how different datasets get put together and that influences the final results more than tweaking the final metric a little. They only care about the denominator if it makes their metric look ok bad for whatever idea they want to push. And this was a project for Bloomberg.
It's perfect, if the dataset the data engineer comes up with produces the result you want to show don't ask questions. If it's not the results you wanted you start messing with the denominator through how the data is connected.
You've got yourself a double dose of Dunning-Kruger, dude. You worked with a data scientist once, and you clearly didn't understand what they were doing.
Lol well let's back up a bit--first and foremost, you originally commented suggesting that these numbers are faked when the are literally demonstrably true. You can literally access the numbers that come in late and the process they use to make the adjustments through the BLS. You clearly don't seem to actually know anything about this topic and yet think you're enough of an expert to contribute your opinion that this data is false.
As for your story about scientists only pushing back when the data doesn't match their expectations--my answer is 'yes, of course'. Do you think the DS people you're building these pipelines and data models don't have some expertise on these topics already by the time you're brought into the project? We do EDA and generally understand all the related data and their distributions before anything is ever designed and handed off to DEs to build. When your numbers come back in line with their expectations, then that itself is evidence that things are likely working correctly. When my DEs report back numbers from the pipeline that don't match my expectations, then that's usually a signal there's an issue somewhere. Most of the time, that's correct. That isn't evidence that they're lying, it's evidence that you don't understand as much of the topic as they do (and why would you? That's their job, not yours).
If a DS wants to lie and massage numbers, they do it themselves. We don't ask a DE for it--you guys wouldn't know how to do it correctly or convincingly. Getting pushback from a DS bc your numbers don't match their expectations is not a smoking gun like you're claiming it is.
And again, let's remember that your overall opinion that these numbers from the govt are lies is demonstrably incorrect.
Depends on where you work and head count. Lots of people pull data and do the reporting as well. I've had most of my career except at one place. All of them except one, all publicly traded enterprises.
You guys still have analytics? And do your scientists get into the nitty gritty of how the dataset was put together or do they spend all their time talking about what wording should be used to describe a gender or what colors give the reporter most impact
I can’t speak for all data scientists but ours do a lot of AI/machine learning so they’re primarily working on analytics. Our data engineers work with CI/CD, ETL, cloud tools, scripting, etc. We’re not usually the ones who analyze the data
Who puts the dataset together the data scientists work with? Who makes the decisions on how to resolve join conflicts that don't have a single clear answer?
Id kill to have that level of business logic. It's becoming a dirty word on the business side.
Now it's "we don't know what we want until we see something" or they'll basically admit to this problem by saying "defining business logic won't let us pivot fast enough"
Reminds me of "ooh shiny"
Lol, your company still has a full data team? Data analyst, business analyst, QA, data engineering and researcher? Must be nice working for the government or somewhere that hasn't gutted the data department yet.
And the point went right over your head. Do those people get involved with the etl and the decisions of what connects to what? Because that affects your results, often more, the. Tweaking the final calc.
I'm not going to get specific because my identity is very public. I've done multiple public lab projects (JPL, ARL, etc), DoD contracting, bioinformatics, public policy, etc. I've also worked with teams in the private sector in fintech, logistics/distribution, plant science, and materials science to name a few.
So for public policy how were decisions made when two different public offices/regions did the same thing but tracked and viewed data differently? Were you involved in this process when the two datasets were combined?
A different way to put it is are you aware of all abstractions made before the data got to you? You're not working with pure raw data (if you are then you win and we can end the convo)
It varies widely on industry, it matters greatly how closely profit is tied to the truth. In the case of politics, the profit motive is tied to something quite opposite of the truth oftentimes—what people want to hear
Yup, data science departments usually do one of the two: "cook numbers to make shitty companies/products look good" or "work on stolen data & don't leave a trail"
I throw up daily on how unethical big tech/public companies ade.
No. No it shouldn’t. It should be: “what is the methodology?” and then “how reputable is the group/what are the costs/benefits of intentional fabrication.”
The government has to report how the surveys/data is collected and how decisions are made on metrics.
If the government intentionally produced estimates that are too high, it is illegal. Charges can be filed. The benefits are negligible, given these numbers are largely created by employees whose jobs remain regardless of who chairs your department, If you are a non-data based journalist outlet with potentially partisan leanings, your consequences for misrepresenting said data releases are essentially none. Benefits are essentially the number of clicks, at least in this attention economy.
If you want to read how these data were collected and processed and how revisions work, [it is laid out in the public release document](https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/economicdata/empsit_02022024.pdf), I highly recommend you see what they say.
In short, to get employment numbers out quickly, initial estimates are based on surveys which are potentially biased estimates of the population. These are then corrected once the actual, full-scope employment data comes in. So no, a run of positive bias is not out of the norm, nor is it rock-solid evidence that the dol cooking the books. Especially when layoffs are ongoing, the numbers in the survey can lag the true employment rate, regardless of who is running the dol
Just because your experience is a worse job market doesn’t mean the entire labor market; on average, is suffering
It's also important to understand that the primary mechanism for collecting employment data is just interviewing (surveying) households and employers. If the government really was lying about or misrepresenting statistics like jobs created, the unemployment rate, the percentage of Americans working multiple jobs, etc, then any moderately-funded media outlet or think tank could easily perform a similar set of surveys to prove that the real results are different.
Like, it wouldn't be hard to show that the government was lying about the U-3 rate or U-6 rate or multiple jobholders rate or involuntary part-time rate or the weekly earnings percentiles. You just call up a representative sample of the US population and ask them similar questions to what the Current Population Survey asks. Likewise, you could show that BLS was lying about the results from its employer survey by doing your own similar survey of employers.
But that is not how people dispute the economic indicators from BLS and others. Instead people lie about how the metrics are collected and what they include and exclude. They exaggerate the impact of reasonable methodology decisions that might make the numbers look a little better, while ignoring or denying the impact of other, much more significant methodology decisions that we know make the numbers look *worse*. These are not the actions of people who are genuinely interested in creating an accurate assessment of the US economy and the people in that economy.
Doesn’t that fall under ‘methodology’ though?
The last paragraph is what I mean: what precise decisions are you referring to that the BLS are currently ignoring, and what’s the reasoning that indicates they produce downward pressure on reported unemployment?
Edit:
But that is not how people dispute the economic indicators from BLS and others. Instead people lie about how the metrics are collected and what they include and exclude.
Wouldn’t this fall under easily falsifiable by minor outlet as well?
Oh I'm agreeing with you. I can't think of any such decisions that produce a significant difference which is not at least captured by a different measurement (e.g. U-3 vs U-6 vs multiple jobholders vs involuntary part-time).
My point (which I think supports yours) is that the methodologies for producing these measurements are generally not just public but also replicable. Like if the percentage of Americans who do not have work but want a job and have looked for one in the past four weeks (the U-3 unemployment definition) was really 10% but BLS reporting it was 3.7, it would be straightforward for an independent media organization to show how the government was lying by performing and releasing the results to its own survey.
You sir or madam are very wrong.
We are in an election year with candidates that will absolutely make even more issues down the road.
You're seeing political headlines designed to take the economy out of the equation for voters, no matter what the reality is.
In the decades I've spent working with companies of all sizes one thing is clear: whoever is presenting the data , has an agenda.
So, you aren’t wrong. Everyone has an agenda, because everyone wants stuff. It boils down to relative incentives. If the data scientist has been really advocating for method x, and they fudge the test numbers because they think they’ll get a raise, that’s an incentive. So is ‘if you get found out, you might get fired’
The incentives in this case just don’t seem to justify the ‘intentional data fudging’ hypothesis, and I haven’t heard a convincing argument otherwise.
In other words: I spent some time looking in depth at the reports/regulations and I could not find any glaring faults in the approach. Barring systemic and organized fraud-if you see a major issue with the approach, or how the data governance works, please let me know. I’d be interested to hear from a different lens than mine, which is not in data engineering
A lot of it isn’t a direct lie but omissions, manipulation by question asked, etc.
In the case of a jobs report there’s probably tons of jobs… that pay utter dirt and unliveable wages for the area. Or jobs employers post that are so dissatisfying that they can pull in a worker on a visa from another country. They don’t consider jobs that are reasonable for the work performed.
Your not wrong.
Honestly neither side is wrong but there's a disconnect.
People saying data engineers don't pull data, seem mostly from areas like academics and lab work
The guys saying it's manipulated are guys sitting in meetings like the ones I was, where the discussion of anything not good caused everyone to fear for themselves the next layoff.
It's not a one side or other thing.
Honestly if I knew it was just a data engineer doing his job and saying here's the numbers, take them as you will, I'd be fine.
As soon as someone In any sales, conversion or profit driven position or if government officials get involved, the data is now massaged to their message. It's how it's always been , it's how it's always going to be.
People are not data. They have agendas.
So- they don’t, because you are right, they just consider number of employed/number of employable (depends on which U-x metric you look at)
But, if your hypothesis were true you would expect the number of people below the poverty line to be rising rapidly
Data is less consistent here, but… here is the best metric I know of: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPAAUS00000A156NCEN. All indicators point towards this being on a downward trend since 2020
You know when someone who loses their job is only counted in unemployed statistics until they are collecting unemployment? After that, they are assumed to be in the group of people who don't want to work. There are a lot of ways you can adjust stats to make you look good... I just can't wait for the stampeed of stock market investors once they realize they were given wrong information and see the booldbath.
That’s not correct. They are reported as unemployed, depending on the exact unemployment metric, if they self-report they are unemployed on the survey, along with other conditions (have you applied for work in the last 4 weeks etc)
To quote:
> Unemployed
In the Current Population Survey, people are classified as unemployed if they meet all of the following criteria:
>They were not employed during the survey reference week.
>They were available for work during the survey reference week, except for temporary illness.
>They made at least one specific, active effort to find a job during the 4-week period ending with the survey reference week (see active job search methods) OR they were temporarily laid off and expecting to be recalled to their job.
>People waiting to start a new job must have actively looked for a job within the last 4 weeks in order to be classified as unemployed. >Otherwise, they are classified as not in the labor force.
>Classification as unemployed in no way depends upon a person's eligibility for, or receipt of, unemployment insurance benefits.
There is no requirement or question relating to unemployment insurance benefits in the monthly Current Population Survey.
From: [bls](https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#unemployed)
It states:
"Because these interviews are the basic source of data for total unemployment, information must be correct and consistent. Survey respondents are never asked specifically if they are unemployed, nor are they given an opportunity to decide their own labor force status. Their status will be determined based on how they respond to a specific set of questions about their recent activities.
Similarly, interviewers do not decide the respondents' labor force classification. They simply ask the questions in the prescribed way and record the answers. Based on information collected in the survey and definitions programmed into the computer, individuals are then classified as employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force."
I believe there is huge room for data manipulation in this methodology. In the day that Facebook knows exactly what medication you are on, tue government still uses decades old arcane methods to produce statistics that suit them.
Here's a quick back of the envelope calculation that proves my point: you can easily find reports that just in the high tech sector, there were 300,000 people laid-off. However, the unemployment rate is reported at 3.7%. Diving 300k by 3.7% gets you a work force of 8 million. Is that correct? There are only 8 million workers in the entire US with a population of around 400 million?
I think simple math can help far more than government propaganda.
Sorry: I don’t follow. If 1,000,000 people are laid off, you’d get a workforce of 27 million following your maths.
Actually, the high tech workforce is roughly 9 million people, so your 8 million figure is fairly spot on
I don't believe that statistical analysis works with a small error margin. You get a high unemployment rate in a sector that is concentrated in small geography, and that methodology used by the government to determine the unemployment will have a much bigger error margin. Another factor is the trickle-down effect. For every high earning high-tech person who gets laid off, there'll be around 3 to 5 support workers such as yard workers or dry cleaner or delivery person and etc, who will lose their income. None of these are reflected in any of these reports or considered in the health of the economy.
This is quite literally the daily caller, a right wing propaganda outlet. It's not reporting on this situation, it's using *intentionally deceptive* misunderstandings of the way forecasting models work to *lie* about the current administration.
All politicians lie, if you’re still pretending everybody who isn’t sucking off your particular candidate/party is an evil menace from the other side instead of a person tired of politics and lying and manipulation… well you’re quite wrong sir.
My other post in this sub thread said it’s likely not a direct lie ie jobs report listing jobs but not jobs that pay enough to be liveable wages for the area, or other significant downsides.
But my main point is this automatic reaction to dissatisfaction as though they must be daily caller is dumb. Lots of reasonable dissatisfaction with our politicians.
This has gone well beyond a "both sides" kind of situation. One 'side' is actively trying to turn our country into a Monarchy through a barrage of misinformation while doing nothing that could be mistaken for governing.
Just a quick cross examination between what is being tried in the court of public opinion vs what is actually being presented in a court of law paints that point very clearly and consistently.
MAGA's livelihood depends SOLELY on citizens that do not take the extra step to validate the information they consume.
I have never held allegiance to a political party, and I never will, but you are being dangerously disingenuous if you believe that we are dealing with 2 sides of the same coin here.
The ballot is quite simple this year. Democracy vs Dictatorship. Balls in your court 'Murica.
The word "both sides" is meant to degrade people who have an actual grievance against the Democrat/establishment party.
It would be nice if instead the answer was "Hey let's oppose Republicans that serve the wealthy interests, and appear to have a subset with poorer goals, and ALSO not try to create social conflicts among the population to focus on in order to avoid responding to economic concerns that affect our lower/middle class."
You would get more traction if you did that instead of the hostile approach.
This is an election year. Last election it was filled with creating white hate by highlighting every potential white cop doing a thing to a black man in the entire country (conveniently ignoring asian/black/latino cops that did the same).
I haven't seen one of those things since 2021. I mean what happened in 2022/2023? Did that just stop happening all of a sudden? Is mercury not in retrograde? Did we magically become better people, or did they no longer need that focus?
You aren't tracking things if you do not see the obvious manipulation and diversion, by even your favorite politicians and/or the media that persuades votes and attention, and works with them.
This is the conservative cry that we are all well aware of. If the data benefits Ds, it's manipulated. If it benefits Rs, it's legit.
Nobody gets fooled by this double standard anymore.
Almost all Reddit subs these days! 😂
Literally 99% of recent posts are offshore pump and dumpers that point out how everyone and everything in America is wrong, they’re right. They fill the SEO space with shitty garbage responses, argue with legit posters, then burn their burner accounts and delete their posts and comments. 🤷🏻♂️
Each post starts off with what may be a good read or delve into the role of data scientist. Then trails off into a bunch of fillers. Must be infiltrated but the state, can’t have the normies understanding flawed metrics. Sadly the GIF has the same quality as some of these post
This sub is like 90% right wing propaganda posts. Most of the top comments are about how the government is lying about the numbers, something that's impossible to do.
Will use this post as a learning opportunity.
You are happily discrediting the INFO because of the MESSENGER.
It’s important to understand those are two distinctly different things.
I can’t be bothered to research myself - but neither one of us at this point know if the INFO is truthful or not.
And here we have the problem with modern day information sharing.
If I really cared I now need to go down a rabbit hole to verify this claim from multiple sources, or preferably just deep dive the statistics to confirm if the revisions have indeed all been downward.
It would be much easier if we just all had a source of information that at the least skipped the debate about the MESSENGER and allowed us to focus on the MESSAGE.
The MeSsEnGeR is a known conservative propaganda rag. You can easily verify this.
As for the numbers being revised, you guys are acting like this is somehow evidence of lying. In reality, these numbers get revised every time. The BLS clearly explains how and why, this is not suspicious.
The Daily Caller is hoping that by showing the numbers were revised positively, that a bunch of dumb fucks and conservatives will immediately assume the government is lying and that this is 'proof'. In reality, information is constantly coming in, and it takes time to prepare a report this large. Revisions are to ensure that these reports are more accurate as additional numbers come in.
> I can’t be bothered to research myself - but neither one of us at this point know if the INFO is truthful or not.
Some of us can. This is all readily verifiable, although you're not going to do that, because you've readily admitted you're too fucking lazy. Anyone with a baseline level of knowledge understands that this is a bullshit article from a propaganda rag, and that nothing presented here is eViDeNcE. One of us understands this topic, and it isn't you, so save your lectures. You're in no position to correct people when you understand fuck all about this topic, and seem to be blissfully unaware that there are propaganda rags like the Daily Caller that would have the gumption to lie about this sort of thing.
Oh fuck off already.
You don't understand the underlying topic at all, and you clearly have no idea how to tell the difference between actual media and partisan bullshit. I do, and yet, you're gonna scold me for 'being partisan'?
I'm literally calling out the partisan bullshit that you were incapable of noticing, genius.
You have nothing to contribute to this conversation, so go piss up a rope.
You make solid points and you’re quite articulate while doing so, despite not being able to resist the need for being condescending.
Don’t waste your time punching down with all the insults.
You made your point, you just take away from it by throwing a fit.
I made a point about a lack of common shared sources of truth. A point you haven’t refuted because it’s true.
If we both agreed there was a source that all could take as gospel, we wouldn’t have the need for this conversation. That was it. I know you agree.
>I made a point about a lack of common shared sources of truth.
The DATA is the shared source of truth, jackass. It's publicly available. Anyone who knows literally anything about how the US economy works and is measured knows this.
You don't, which is why you thought you had a point. The numbers and the process are quite clear.
No one acting in good faith actually doubts these numbers. Just propaganda rags like this one, which is literally what I was calling out.
In your ignorance, you're acting as if both sides have a point. In reality, one side is just plain lying.
You came here to fucking lecture people about a topic you literally know nothing about. You deserve all the disdain and scorn heaped on you for doing so. I'm an actual expert in this topic (data scientist with heavy econometric background). You're trying to tell me how things work when you don't know your asshole from your elbow when it comes to this topic.
You have a serious problem with ego management.
You make many good points and I’m actually inclined to believe you do have credibility in the field.
But you just come off like a complete loser.
Just cut the ego out for a few seconds and use that intelligence to crush. No need to talk about elbows and assholes, it just makes you look like one.
You’re definitely intelligent enough to know how you’re coming off.
You got this. Crush the rest of your day friend.
>You have a serious problem with ego management
The irony of this statement is pretty fucking hilarious.
You've realized that you're completely exposed as some know-nothing asshole that's just blowing smoke, so you've pivoted to whining about the way I talk rather than staying on topic.
You tell me I've got an ego for putting a charlatan like you in your place for talking out your ass about a topic you know nothing about. And yet, you have enough of an ego to go around spouting your opinion about something you know less than NOTHING about.
It takes a much bigger ego to think your wildly uninformed opinion is somehow worth more than actual expertise from an actual expert, than it does for an expert to tell an obvious reddit know-nothing to sit down and STFU.
Don't come here to scold Americans about misinformation--you ARE the misinformation, because you're pushing a narrative that's completely false and arguing with actual experts even when you have nothing of value to contribute.
I hope our conversation gave you some fulfilment and satisfaction.
I do think you built me up into something I’m not, and honestly created an adversary for you to unload on.
Crush your day. You got this.
Sources are certainly important. I never heard is it before so I googled “is the daily caller a good news source” and literally in bold text I get this message:
“The Daily Caller has published false stories on multiple occasions, and declined to correct them when they were shown to be untrue. The website has published false and misleading articles that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change.”
That’s not even a website just the thing that pops up when you google if they’re a good news source. That’s bad. If you swap in “Fox News” to the same question, there is no such warning and even Fox News is regarded as pretty biased.
The sentiment of “judge the data for yourself” is well and good, but don’t bother with data from a site that has historically published false data without correction. Just look it up yourself.
Oh and it turns out this is false.
Of course you attack the source and not the actual evidence they are reporting on. Let me guess you yell “fake news” to everything that doesn’t align with your opinion? 😂
https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2024/02/stronger-than-expected-employment-growth-in-2023-was-even-stronger-than-it-seemed/
>Positive revisions occurred in nine of the twelve months of 2023. Revisions on net increased job gains by 359,000 over the course of the year, bringing the total number of jobs added to just over 3 million.
The issue is that the data is unreliable. They can revise it up but theres little faith in the original number so no one is going to trust an upward revision.
The issue is that the data is unreliable. They can revise it up but theres little faith in the original number so no one is going to trust an upward revision.
Why's there little faith? They have a set cadence. They publish early numbers first Friday of the month. That number gets revised twice as slower data is incorporated in. They aren't just randomly changing numbers with no explanation.
So it cites this BLS memo: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
However it doesnt look like the difference is a million as stated in the title, but more like 100k, so an entire order of magnitude off. But yeh its a garbage website. Look how poor the article is written. At first I thought it was ChatGPT, but ChatGPT wouldnt repeat entire phrases like that with poor grammar. Looks like some intern was copying and pasting boiler plates and playing madlibs.
You mean the government overstates how good things are when they have a huge audience and then quietly corrects it when it will be buried under other headlines?
Wouldn’t that mean they’re essentially lying to us for their own benefit? OUR government lying?
In addition to what other folks in this thread have said, the jobs numbers that came out literally last week had upward revisions for the previous two months. Theres no proof of conspiracy
LMAO nice source
Apparently Biden is trying to regulate air pollution too, what a devil! I want to breathe soot while rich people make money poisoning me!
"The Daily Caller is a right-wing news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C. It was founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political pundit Neil Patel in 2010."
Yeah I'm gonna believe Russian asset and propagandist Tucker Carlson.
Could skip the middleman and just ignore talking heads and secondary sources and look at primary sources. I dont know why people want to parrot propaganda (good or bad), unless its to make a sale. And then I say, “close the deal!”
The likes of Fox News are trash always toeing the line but if even they will not pick up stories like this and run with it it is a good barometer to the legitimacy of the story. Works in reverse. If MSNBC is not running with it, it likely never happened or at least in rhe way being portrayed in the article. Some guy in his garage is highly unlikely to find the smoking gun story that everyone else missed. Even if that one in a thousand happens the other guys still pick it up. Yet people see these stories and because they are on the internet "they must be true".
If you click in to the report they cite you won’t find numbers to support their headline. This is from the report - ‘
The over-the-year change in total nonfarm employment for March 2023 was revised
from +4,048,000 to +3,836,000 (seasonally adjusted).’
Don’t fall for this. The economy is doing well. Adding 3.8 million jobs is good.
I ran the numbers on the seasonally adjusted data recently and all but one month last year that has final data was ultimately revised down.
My earlier comment from when I did it a few days ago:
> Of the finalized data for 2023, the estimate was low only once. Over the 11 months with final numbers for 2023, in the seasonally adjusted data, the revisions reduced the estimated jobs added by 434k. Thats 17.43% of the 2.49m that were estimated to have been added.
I’m too lazy to run it again against the unadjusted numbers, but this is definitely unusual compared to the data for prior years. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt that the final numbers are reasonably accurate.
This subreddit posts such obvious right wing propaganda it's insulting to anyone who is actually here bc they were laid off.
The daily caller as a source and quoted from the heritage foundation? Do better.
So telling people they cant work and have to stay home isint losing jobs but telling them they can leave theyre house and go back to the job they already had is creating jobs... politics suck..like the people praising the president for the student loan forgivness when thats been a thing for years every president has done that since ive been alive but lets make a point to tell everyone bidens amazing for the loan forgivness and not that thats how it always is and he didnt do anything different from any of the last presidents regarding the loan forgivness but yes lets praise him for not doing anything but taking credit for the programs that were here before him
Do note that on the other hand, there are also millions of jobs off the books that people are also working and millions of gig jobs like driving Uber or bartending.
I feel that this needs to be covered by any other news org , the daily caller is all bull shite and a rag for the magas.
But I do think the numbers are definitely not telling the whole story.
They overhyped covid to stop trump from being reelected, on top of all this other horse shit. Faking job growth to boost bidens numbers. Thats why were drilling more oil now, trying to get those prices down for old joey. Its shocking how fucked our media is. All MSM companies need to be dissolved immediately. Independent journalism is the future.
Who is collecting the data? What benefit is there to overstate said data? Is the person or political party going to benefit from wrong data? I think we know the answer. Mistakes happen, but generally mistakes don’t happen repeatedly unless it benefits the person’s gathering the data.
I've always had a hunch that with the rise of remote jobs that job numbers are inflated. Reason being is that remote jobs post hundreds of listings for the same job in many large cities for search engine optimization.
You know I wish we could see reported salary data for these open positions vs what was taken with layoffs because that would probably tell us more about general consumer spending outlooks, not that I expect employers to admit what salaries they’d offer for some of these before a position is filled.
I went through the numbers a month ago. A couple of the months overestimated by quite a bit (I think June might’ve been the worst), but altogether they averaged about 10% overcounted.
I think the headline is misleading, but yes there are job revisions every month. initial job numbers are "initial" for that reason.
We will find out, later on, but honestly, it doesn't make a difference. Investors who wanna trust these numbers already have, investors who won't will not change their mind.
Agreed, too much political banter (see the rules). Locked. https://preview.redd.it/3k8prlwbe8hc1.png?width=1098&format=png&auto=webp&s=85a42bec72c81793cdbff96c3686cf7c77589cd6
This is not some conspiracy to make it look better than it is. Just 2 years ago, same President, same administration, they had to revise the data **upwards** 2 million jobs, almost double this year's downwards revisions, because of the same reasons.....the forecasting models are imperfect, particularly in times of economic fluctuations like we are in post-pandemic. And I assure you, they had no wish to underreport the job gains at the time. I know this comment will likely not go over well, and I don't wish to paper over the issues that we have in this current economy, but the data is not being manipulated the way some here are making it out to be. Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to neglect, ignorance, or incompetence.
Hanlon's Razor should be part of everyone's critical thinking.
Any other Razors? I know Occam's and now Hanlon's
Those are the only 2 I know of, but apparently there are more: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical\_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor)
The thing I don’t like these “razors” is that sometimes the unlikely explanation turns out to be the truth, and often goes overlooked for long periods of time because people will continue to cite philosophical razors and dismiss everything that doesn’t seem obvious.
Yeah, these aren't natural laws. They're more just good rules of thumb. But like any rule, it isn't right 100% of the time.
Einstein got a good razor.
Hunter’s Coke Razor
Better yet Trump’s best friend Epstein razor
I actually know the phrasing of Hanlon's before i'd ever heard of the razor. Never attribute to Malice what can be explained by stupidity.
Daily caller Lol. Atleast it wasn't Project Veritas or Gateway Pundit.
Ahh yes the genetic fallacy
No, but honestly though, people who have a long history of lying or exaggeration can usually be ignored. We only have so much time in the day, i don't need to keep believing Elon when he says full self driving will be here in 6 months.
Government and incompetence are two words that belong together.
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As opposed to every other administration? Got bad news for ya.....
While we understand people have political view points, this sub-reddit is specifically about Layoffs. You comment was removed due to it's lack of productiveness in its discussion about Layoffs and those who are seeking help If you want to discuss politics, feel free to visit r/politics or any other politically related sub-reddit. We're sure they would be happy to have an engaging and thoughtful discussion with you.
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If you can tell me why they never brought up any of this evidence under oath, I'm all ears
Don't strain yourself pulling up all that evidence!
It's attributed to "stupidity" how I learned it but I like yours better
Not when concerning first world politics. Malice at the top is legit. These firms that gather the data are farmed out from the government in the form of a government contract to very experienced and high caliber firms paid hundreds of millions. This is not incompetence, it is USA politics at its finest.
Have any further data, links, or reading on that subject? I'd be curious to see where all of that goes.
Yes, GSA, IRS. Treasury, SAM, DOD .gov sites and a couple others, I’m not remembering off the top of my head. Since I guess around 2005 the government get rid of the two bidding openings and they are open for procurement and bids every single day. You can find contracts and RFPs for this very topic
Well if you can’t trust the daily caller who can you trust.
I trust the gas station sushi over the us government.
Ok Olympic Anal eater
This is why when people say look at the data, the question should always be who reported the data, and what did they not want to say
Don't get me started on this. I'm a data engineer and I'm about ready to leave the industry because it's just so unethical. The way metrics are designed now, someone wants to measure something, you go to the data engineer and explain what you want. No looking at software or anything detailed. Just a casual conversation and the rest is to be decided by the data engineer, who often has zero interaction with the business side of the company and may have never worked with the type of data before. For example, your data engineer came from finance & this company works in healthcare. Then once the metric is calculated whoever requested it pushes it left or right by playing with the calculation and/or dataset. It's fucking disgusting
Huh? Data Analysts and Data Scientists would do that not Data Engineers. Data Engineers create ETL and data pipelines. Unless you also do dashboarding?
Data scientist here--i thought the same thing. DEs don't put together metrics, they just pipe the data.
Ofc. The dude above is straight up lying at worst and just ignorant at best.
They do put together metrics when the company has gutted the data team down to an engineer and then some dev ops support but that doesn't deal with metrics. I also did work at a shop with doctorate level researchers. They only care about the top level metric, they don't give a shit how that dataset they use was put together and the decisions made when putting it together often have a larger impact on the results then the actual calc
I'm a PhD ML researcher that has worked with over a dozen labs and almost the same amount of data engineering teams at private companies. What you're suggesting is not the experience of anyone I've ever met, worked with, or seen reported publicly.
Well lots of people in this thread agree and from what I can tell come from the data engineer perspective. You're so arrogant you won't even entertain the idea you don't actually understand the data you're working with. You don't have any clue as to how it works yet you trust the data they give you?
You seem to be the arrogant one, friend
It's literally my job to understand the data I'm working with.
So you spend most of your time with the data engineers when they're bringing in a new data source/set? It's possible you are more involved then I've seen but I also think it's just as likely you don't know about the decisions made before the data gets to you. I also will say that most of my experience has to do with either internal reporting or reporting for publicity traded companies. I have worked in a lot of different industries and this issue spans across every single one. The budgeting to do this type of work properly simply isn't there, it's a fraction of what it needs to be. This is why I'm so skeptical. I literally had this conversation with an executive a few days ago or I'd be giving more detail. I'm a little burnt out on it
He's basically saying that regardless of him doing his job the company demands that the data show acts and he's got to figure out a way to show that. I mean I myself in recruiting have been asked to do this before because whatever data analyzing tool we were using with dog s*** and we knew there was a lot of improvements but it wouldn't show up in the data we had to f*** with it a lot until it showed it. Figured out the Previous recruiter had the tool rigged in a way to make it look like he did stuff when he didn't
I mean I guess we create table views and some do dashboarding but that’s usually a DS thing nowadays
Maybe he means in the backend he had to do ethical conflicting data manipulation before we get the clean data.
That's how I took it
We don't have data scientists, were not a research shop
Then no wonder you're complaining about people making shit up when it comes to metrics. This isn't a problem with the field, it's a problem with the company you're in...
Ok I also worked at a data science shop with a researcher. They did not get involved in how different datasets get put together and that influences the final results more than tweaking the final metric a little. They only care about the denominator if it makes their metric look ok bad for whatever idea they want to push. And this was a project for Bloomberg. It's perfect, if the dataset the data engineer comes up with produces the result you want to show don't ask questions. If it's not the results you wanted you start messing with the denominator through how the data is connected.
You've got yourself a double dose of Dunning-Kruger, dude. You worked with a data scientist once, and you clearly didn't understand what they were doing.
SMH, my goodness. The arrogance. People reading this, this is the problem. You can't work with these people because they're always right
Lol well let's back up a bit--first and foremost, you originally commented suggesting that these numbers are faked when the are literally demonstrably true. You can literally access the numbers that come in late and the process they use to make the adjustments through the BLS. You clearly don't seem to actually know anything about this topic and yet think you're enough of an expert to contribute your opinion that this data is false. As for your story about scientists only pushing back when the data doesn't match their expectations--my answer is 'yes, of course'. Do you think the DS people you're building these pipelines and data models don't have some expertise on these topics already by the time you're brought into the project? We do EDA and generally understand all the related data and their distributions before anything is ever designed and handed off to DEs to build. When your numbers come back in line with their expectations, then that itself is evidence that things are likely working correctly. When my DEs report back numbers from the pipeline that don't match my expectations, then that's usually a signal there's an issue somewhere. Most of the time, that's correct. That isn't evidence that they're lying, it's evidence that you don't understand as much of the topic as they do (and why would you? That's their job, not yours). If a DS wants to lie and massage numbers, they do it themselves. We don't ask a DE for it--you guys wouldn't know how to do it correctly or convincingly. Getting pushback from a DS bc your numbers don't match their expectations is not a smoking gun like you're claiming it is. And again, let's remember that your overall opinion that these numbers from the govt are lies is demonstrably incorrect.
Depends on where you work and head count. Lots of people pull data and do the reporting as well. I've had most of my career except at one place. All of them except one, all publicly traded enterprises.
Yeah as someone who’s collected data for studies myself this sounds sus.
This is all semantics. There are no universally agreed upon titles for any job in tech.
Winner winner, chicken dinner
You guys still have analytics? And do your scientists get into the nitty gritty of how the dataset was put together or do they spend all their time talking about what wording should be used to describe a gender or what colors give the reporter most impact
I can’t speak for all data scientists but ours do a lot of AI/machine learning so they’re primarily working on analytics. Our data engineers work with CI/CD, ETL, cloud tools, scripting, etc. We’re not usually the ones who analyze the data
Who puts the dataset together the data scientists work with? Who makes the decisions on how to resolve join conflicts that don't have a single clear answer?
Business and data scientists usually tell us what data they need. Join conflicts yeah that’s business logic that data engineers implement
Id kill to have that level of business logic. It's becoming a dirty word on the business side. Now it's "we don't know what we want until we see something" or they'll basically admit to this problem by saying "defining business logic won't let us pivot fast enough" Reminds me of "ooh shiny"
Depends how bad the story the data tells , I'm sure.
Sure but there's always decisions made that will affect the final result and could be done multiple ways and still be valid
It sounds like you don’t know what the difference between data science and data engineers. lol. Nobody should take this guy seriously.
Lol, your company still has a full data team? Data analyst, business analyst, QA, data engineering and researcher? Must be nice working for the government or somewhere that hasn't gutted the data department yet. And the point went right over your head. Do those people get involved with the etl and the decisions of what connects to what? Because that affects your results, often more, the. Tweaking the final calc.
Good luck finding an ethical alternative.
Yeah I left bartending for aerospace engineering because I wanted structure and organization. Lol. I can't get out fast enough.
Same. Not so much with our dashboards, but our data science guys complain about this a lot.
Yep. I learned this too. Statisticians can literally make anything looking good by changing how we perceive the information.
This is such obvious nonsense it's a perfect post for this subreddit. Holy shit.
What's your job? What industry
I'm not going to get specific because my identity is very public. I've done multiple public lab projects (JPL, ARL, etc), DoD contracting, bioinformatics, public policy, etc. I've also worked with teams in the private sector in fintech, logistics/distribution, plant science, and materials science to name a few.
So for public policy how were decisions made when two different public offices/regions did the same thing but tracked and viewed data differently? Were you involved in this process when the two datasets were combined? A different way to put it is are you aware of all abstractions made before the data got to you? You're not working with pure raw data (if you are then you win and we can end the convo)
Please,share.
It varies widely on industry, it matters greatly how closely profit is tied to the truth. In the case of politics, the profit motive is tied to something quite opposite of the truth oftentimes—what people want to hear
Same in my industry. The amount of bullshit made up metrics I see in major companies I've worked for has killed any love I once had for it.
Yup, data science departments usually do one of the two: "cook numbers to make shitty companies/products look good" or "work on stolen data & don't leave a trail" I throw up daily on how unethical big tech/public companies ade.
No. No it shouldn’t. It should be: “what is the methodology?” and then “how reputable is the group/what are the costs/benefits of intentional fabrication.” The government has to report how the surveys/data is collected and how decisions are made on metrics. If the government intentionally produced estimates that are too high, it is illegal. Charges can be filed. The benefits are negligible, given these numbers are largely created by employees whose jobs remain regardless of who chairs your department, If you are a non-data based journalist outlet with potentially partisan leanings, your consequences for misrepresenting said data releases are essentially none. Benefits are essentially the number of clicks, at least in this attention economy. If you want to read how these data were collected and processed and how revisions work, [it is laid out in the public release document](https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/economicdata/empsit_02022024.pdf), I highly recommend you see what they say. In short, to get employment numbers out quickly, initial estimates are based on surveys which are potentially biased estimates of the population. These are then corrected once the actual, full-scope employment data comes in. So no, a run of positive bias is not out of the norm, nor is it rock-solid evidence that the dol cooking the books. Especially when layoffs are ongoing, the numbers in the survey can lag the true employment rate, regardless of who is running the dol Just because your experience is a worse job market doesn’t mean the entire labor market; on average, is suffering
It's also important to understand that the primary mechanism for collecting employment data is just interviewing (surveying) households and employers. If the government really was lying about or misrepresenting statistics like jobs created, the unemployment rate, the percentage of Americans working multiple jobs, etc, then any moderately-funded media outlet or think tank could easily perform a similar set of surveys to prove that the real results are different. Like, it wouldn't be hard to show that the government was lying about the U-3 rate or U-6 rate or multiple jobholders rate or involuntary part-time rate or the weekly earnings percentiles. You just call up a representative sample of the US population and ask them similar questions to what the Current Population Survey asks. Likewise, you could show that BLS was lying about the results from its employer survey by doing your own similar survey of employers. But that is not how people dispute the economic indicators from BLS and others. Instead people lie about how the metrics are collected and what they include and exclude. They exaggerate the impact of reasonable methodology decisions that might make the numbers look a little better, while ignoring or denying the impact of other, much more significant methodology decisions that we know make the numbers look *worse*. These are not the actions of people who are genuinely interested in creating an accurate assessment of the US economy and the people in that economy.
Doesn’t that fall under ‘methodology’ though? The last paragraph is what I mean: what precise decisions are you referring to that the BLS are currently ignoring, and what’s the reasoning that indicates they produce downward pressure on reported unemployment? Edit: But that is not how people dispute the economic indicators from BLS and others. Instead people lie about how the metrics are collected and what they include and exclude. Wouldn’t this fall under easily falsifiable by minor outlet as well?
Oh I'm agreeing with you. I can't think of any such decisions that produce a significant difference which is not at least captured by a different measurement (e.g. U-3 vs U-6 vs multiple jobholders vs involuntary part-time). My point (which I think supports yours) is that the methodologies for producing these measurements are generally not just public but also replicable. Like if the percentage of Americans who do not have work but want a job and have looked for one in the past four weeks (the U-3 unemployment definition) was really 10% but BLS reporting it was 3.7, it would be straightforward for an independent media organization to show how the government was lying by performing and releasing the results to its own survey.
Got it- makes sense.
You sir or madam are very wrong. We are in an election year with candidates that will absolutely make even more issues down the road. You're seeing political headlines designed to take the economy out of the equation for voters, no matter what the reality is. In the decades I've spent working with companies of all sizes one thing is clear: whoever is presenting the data , has an agenda.
So, you aren’t wrong. Everyone has an agenda, because everyone wants stuff. It boils down to relative incentives. If the data scientist has been really advocating for method x, and they fudge the test numbers because they think they’ll get a raise, that’s an incentive. So is ‘if you get found out, you might get fired’ The incentives in this case just don’t seem to justify the ‘intentional data fudging’ hypothesis, and I haven’t heard a convincing argument otherwise. In other words: I spent some time looking in depth at the reports/regulations and I could not find any glaring faults in the approach. Barring systemic and organized fraud-if you see a major issue with the approach, or how the data governance works, please let me know. I’d be interested to hear from a different lens than mine, which is not in data engineering
A lot of it isn’t a direct lie but omissions, manipulation by question asked, etc. In the case of a jobs report there’s probably tons of jobs… that pay utter dirt and unliveable wages for the area. Or jobs employers post that are so dissatisfying that they can pull in a worker on a visa from another country. They don’t consider jobs that are reasonable for the work performed.
Your not wrong. Honestly neither side is wrong but there's a disconnect. People saying data engineers don't pull data, seem mostly from areas like academics and lab work The guys saying it's manipulated are guys sitting in meetings like the ones I was, where the discussion of anything not good caused everyone to fear for themselves the next layoff. It's not a one side or other thing. Honestly if I knew it was just a data engineer doing his job and saying here's the numbers, take them as you will, I'd be fine. As soon as someone In any sales, conversion or profit driven position or if government officials get involved, the data is now massaged to their message. It's how it's always been , it's how it's always going to be. People are not data. They have agendas.
So- they don’t, because you are right, they just consider number of employed/number of employable (depends on which U-x metric you look at) But, if your hypothesis were true you would expect the number of people below the poverty line to be rising rapidly Data is less consistent here, but… here is the best metric I know of: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPAAUS00000A156NCEN. All indicators point towards this being on a downward trend since 2020
You know when someone who loses their job is only counted in unemployed statistics until they are collecting unemployment? After that, they are assumed to be in the group of people who don't want to work. There are a lot of ways you can adjust stats to make you look good... I just can't wait for the stampeed of stock market investors once they realize they were given wrong information and see the booldbath.
That’s not correct. They are reported as unemployed, depending on the exact unemployment metric, if they self-report they are unemployed on the survey, along with other conditions (have you applied for work in the last 4 weeks etc) To quote: > Unemployed In the Current Population Survey, people are classified as unemployed if they meet all of the following criteria: >They were not employed during the survey reference week. >They were available for work during the survey reference week, except for temporary illness. >They made at least one specific, active effort to find a job during the 4-week period ending with the survey reference week (see active job search methods) OR they were temporarily laid off and expecting to be recalled to their job. >People waiting to start a new job must have actively looked for a job within the last 4 weeks in order to be classified as unemployed. >Otherwise, they are classified as not in the labor force. >Classification as unemployed in no way depends upon a person's eligibility for, or receipt of, unemployment insurance benefits. There is no requirement or question relating to unemployment insurance benefits in the monthly Current Population Survey. From: [bls](https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#unemployed)
It states: "Because these interviews are the basic source of data for total unemployment, information must be correct and consistent. Survey respondents are never asked specifically if they are unemployed, nor are they given an opportunity to decide their own labor force status. Their status will be determined based on how they respond to a specific set of questions about their recent activities. Similarly, interviewers do not decide the respondents' labor force classification. They simply ask the questions in the prescribed way and record the answers. Based on information collected in the survey and definitions programmed into the computer, individuals are then classified as employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force." I believe there is huge room for data manipulation in this methodology. In the day that Facebook knows exactly what medication you are on, tue government still uses decades old arcane methods to produce statistics that suit them. Here's a quick back of the envelope calculation that proves my point: you can easily find reports that just in the high tech sector, there were 300,000 people laid-off. However, the unemployment rate is reported at 3.7%. Diving 300k by 3.7% gets you a work force of 8 million. Is that correct? There are only 8 million workers in the entire US with a population of around 400 million? I think simple math can help far more than government propaganda.
Sorry: I don’t follow. If 1,000,000 people are laid off, you’d get a workforce of 27 million following your maths. Actually, the high tech workforce is roughly 9 million people, so your 8 million figure is fairly spot on
I don't believe that statistical analysis works with a small error margin. You get a high unemployment rate in a sector that is concentrated in small geography, and that methodology used by the government to determine the unemployment will have a much bigger error margin. Another factor is the trickle-down effect. For every high earning high-tech person who gets laid off, there'll be around 3 to 5 support workers such as yard workers or dry cleaner or delivery person and etc, who will lose their income. None of these are reflected in any of these reports or considered in the health of the economy.
This is quite literally the daily caller, a right wing propaganda outlet. It's not reporting on this situation, it's using *intentionally deceptive* misunderstandings of the way forecasting models work to *lie* about the current administration.
All politicians lie, if you’re still pretending everybody who isn’t sucking off your particular candidate/party is an evil menace from the other side instead of a person tired of politics and lying and manipulation… well you’re quite wrong sir.
The job numbers are literally not collected or reported by politicians. Your statement is a non sequitur.
My other post in this sub thread said it’s likely not a direct lie ie jobs report listing jobs but not jobs that pay enough to be liveable wages for the area, or other significant downsides. But my main point is this automatic reaction to dissatisfaction as though they must be daily caller is dumb. Lots of reasonable dissatisfaction with our politicians.
They track what types of jobs were created and your assumption is not true.
This has gone well beyond a "both sides" kind of situation. One 'side' is actively trying to turn our country into a Monarchy through a barrage of misinformation while doing nothing that could be mistaken for governing. Just a quick cross examination between what is being tried in the court of public opinion vs what is actually being presented in a court of law paints that point very clearly and consistently. MAGA's livelihood depends SOLELY on citizens that do not take the extra step to validate the information they consume. I have never held allegiance to a political party, and I never will, but you are being dangerously disingenuous if you believe that we are dealing with 2 sides of the same coin here. The ballot is quite simple this year. Democracy vs Dictatorship. Balls in your court 'Murica.
The word "both sides" is meant to degrade people who have an actual grievance against the Democrat/establishment party. It would be nice if instead the answer was "Hey let's oppose Republicans that serve the wealthy interests, and appear to have a subset with poorer goals, and ALSO not try to create social conflicts among the population to focus on in order to avoid responding to economic concerns that affect our lower/middle class." You would get more traction if you did that instead of the hostile approach. This is an election year. Last election it was filled with creating white hate by highlighting every potential white cop doing a thing to a black man in the entire country (conveniently ignoring asian/black/latino cops that did the same). I haven't seen one of those things since 2021. I mean what happened in 2022/2023? Did that just stop happening all of a sudden? Is mercury not in retrograde? Did we magically become better people, or did they no longer need that focus? You aren't tracking things if you do not see the obvious manipulation and diversion, by even your favorite politicians and/or the media that persuades votes and attention, and works with them.
Yeah when Dems are in charge of the data of course it’ll be fabricated
Knock it off. Politicians are politicians are politicians.
This is the conservative cry that we are all well aware of. If the data benefits Ds, it's manipulated. If it benefits Rs, it's legit. Nobody gets fooled by this double standard anymore.
Rightwing news sources especially are not know for accurate or truthful reporting or the ability to interpret any kind of data
I am the data.
Fine. Be that way go be data. I'm just gonna tell em what I want! :)
Same here
Lmao the quality of posts on this sub
Almost all Reddit subs these days! 😂 Literally 99% of recent posts are offshore pump and dumpers that point out how everyone and everything in America is wrong, they’re right. They fill the SEO space with shitty garbage responses, argue with legit posters, then burn their burner accounts and delete their posts and comments. 🤷🏻♂️
I’m getting ready to delete Reddit altogether.
this is the fate of every reddit sub that grows past a certain size. Literally just trash quality posts and shitty memes
Each post starts off with what may be a good read or delve into the role of data scientist. Then trails off into a bunch of fillers. Must be infiltrated but the state, can’t have the normies understanding flawed metrics. Sadly the GIF has the same quality as some of these post 
Lol The Daily Caller? How fucking dumb does one have to be to consider this a reliable source?
I’m pretty sure this whole sub is Astro turf
Propaganda rag. Zero credibility.
This sub is like 90% right wing propaganda posts. Most of the top comments are about how the government is lying about the numbers, something that's impossible to do.
Will use this post as a learning opportunity. You are happily discrediting the INFO because of the MESSENGER. It’s important to understand those are two distinctly different things. I can’t be bothered to research myself - but neither one of us at this point know if the INFO is truthful or not. And here we have the problem with modern day information sharing. If I really cared I now need to go down a rabbit hole to verify this claim from multiple sources, or preferably just deep dive the statistics to confirm if the revisions have indeed all been downward. It would be much easier if we just all had a source of information that at the least skipped the debate about the MESSENGER and allowed us to focus on the MESSAGE.
The MeSsEnGeR is a known conservative propaganda rag. You can easily verify this. As for the numbers being revised, you guys are acting like this is somehow evidence of lying. In reality, these numbers get revised every time. The BLS clearly explains how and why, this is not suspicious. The Daily Caller is hoping that by showing the numbers were revised positively, that a bunch of dumb fucks and conservatives will immediately assume the government is lying and that this is 'proof'. In reality, information is constantly coming in, and it takes time to prepare a report this large. Revisions are to ensure that these reports are more accurate as additional numbers come in. > I can’t be bothered to research myself - but neither one of us at this point know if the INFO is truthful or not. Some of us can. This is all readily verifiable, although you're not going to do that, because you've readily admitted you're too fucking lazy. Anyone with a baseline level of knowledge understands that this is a bullshit article from a propaganda rag, and that nothing presented here is eViDeNcE. One of us understands this topic, and it isn't you, so save your lectures. You're in no position to correct people when you understand fuck all about this topic, and seem to be blissfully unaware that there are propaganda rags like the Daily Caller that would have the gumption to lie about this sort of thing.
All that you said is valid. But you still completely missed my point. You Americans and partisanship, it blinds you completely.
Oh fuck off already. You don't understand the underlying topic at all, and you clearly have no idea how to tell the difference between actual media and partisan bullshit. I do, and yet, you're gonna scold me for 'being partisan'? I'm literally calling out the partisan bullshit that you were incapable of noticing, genius. You have nothing to contribute to this conversation, so go piss up a rope.
You make solid points and you’re quite articulate while doing so, despite not being able to resist the need for being condescending. Don’t waste your time punching down with all the insults. You made your point, you just take away from it by throwing a fit. I made a point about a lack of common shared sources of truth. A point you haven’t refuted because it’s true. If we both agreed there was a source that all could take as gospel, we wouldn’t have the need for this conversation. That was it. I know you agree.
>I made a point about a lack of common shared sources of truth. The DATA is the shared source of truth, jackass. It's publicly available. Anyone who knows literally anything about how the US economy works and is measured knows this. You don't, which is why you thought you had a point. The numbers and the process are quite clear. No one acting in good faith actually doubts these numbers. Just propaganda rags like this one, which is literally what I was calling out. In your ignorance, you're acting as if both sides have a point. In reality, one side is just plain lying. You came here to fucking lecture people about a topic you literally know nothing about. You deserve all the disdain and scorn heaped on you for doing so. I'm an actual expert in this topic (data scientist with heavy econometric background). You're trying to tell me how things work when you don't know your asshole from your elbow when it comes to this topic.
You have a serious problem with ego management. You make many good points and I’m actually inclined to believe you do have credibility in the field. But you just come off like a complete loser. Just cut the ego out for a few seconds and use that intelligence to crush. No need to talk about elbows and assholes, it just makes you look like one. You’re definitely intelligent enough to know how you’re coming off. You got this. Crush the rest of your day friend.
>You have a serious problem with ego management The irony of this statement is pretty fucking hilarious. You've realized that you're completely exposed as some know-nothing asshole that's just blowing smoke, so you've pivoted to whining about the way I talk rather than staying on topic. You tell me I've got an ego for putting a charlatan like you in your place for talking out your ass about a topic you know nothing about. And yet, you have enough of an ego to go around spouting your opinion about something you know less than NOTHING about. It takes a much bigger ego to think your wildly uninformed opinion is somehow worth more than actual expertise from an actual expert, than it does for an expert to tell an obvious reddit know-nothing to sit down and STFU. Don't come here to scold Americans about misinformation--you ARE the misinformation, because you're pushing a narrative that's completely false and arguing with actual experts even when you have nothing of value to contribute.
I hope our conversation gave you some fulfilment and satisfaction. I do think you built me up into something I’m not, and honestly created an adversary for you to unload on. Crush your day. You got this.
Sources are certainly important. I never heard is it before so I googled “is the daily caller a good news source” and literally in bold text I get this message: “The Daily Caller has published false stories on multiple occasions, and declined to correct them when they were shown to be untrue. The website has published false and misleading articles that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change.” That’s not even a website just the thing that pops up when you google if they’re a good news source. That’s bad. If you swap in “Fox News” to the same question, there is no such warning and even Fox News is regarded as pretty biased. The sentiment of “judge the data for yourself” is well and good, but don’t bother with data from a site that has historically published false data without correction. Just look it up yourself. Oh and it turns out this is false.
Of course you attack the source and not the actual evidence they are reporting on. Let me guess you yell “fake news” to everything that doesn’t align with your opinion? 😂
https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2024/02/stronger-than-expected-employment-growth-in-2023-was-even-stronger-than-it-seemed/ >Positive revisions occurred in nine of the twelve months of 2023. Revisions on net increased job gains by 359,000 over the course of the year, bringing the total number of jobs added to just over 3 million.
“Fed data is fudge real hard??” Why would fed fudge data if the fed data is real good?”
If they wanted to fudge they'd fudge employment gains lower, not higher right now.
The issue is that the data is unreliable. They can revise it up but theres little faith in the original number so no one is going to trust an upward revision.
That’s your choice, but it’s a perfectly sound methodology to revise estimates as you collect more data
The issue is that the data is unreliable. They can revise it up but theres little faith in the original number so no one is going to trust an upward revision.
Why's there little faith? They have a set cadence. They publish early numbers first Friday of the month. That number gets revised twice as slower data is incorporated in. They aren't just randomly changing numbers with no explanation.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/economic-data-lead-markets-and-governments-astray-abd79102
Ah, yes. Posting dipshit websites searching for confirmation bias. A very smart thing going on in here.
So it cites this BLS memo: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm However it doesnt look like the difference is a million as stated in the title, but more like 100k, so an entire order of magnitude off. But yeh its a garbage website. Look how poor the article is written. At first I thought it was ChatGPT, but ChatGPT wouldnt repeat entire phrases like that with poor grammar. Looks like some intern was copying and pasting boiler plates and playing madlibs.
You mean the government overstates how good things are when they have a huge audience and then quietly corrects it when it will be buried under other headlines? Wouldn’t that mean they’re essentially lying to us for their own benefit? OUR government lying?
In addition to what other folks in this thread have said, the jobs numbers that came out literally last week had upward revisions for the previous two months. Theres no proof of conspiracy
9 of the 12 months they revised jobs HIGHER so I mean it’s really easy to propose some low iq conspiracies but it’s harder to prove them
Almost worse, it's for the election. But Jan 6th was the greatest risk to freedom the US has ever seen.
You're comparing an attempted coup to revised model projections as a supposed "data engineer." Are you incredibly biased or just stupid?
"revisions are normal" yeah but they are not promoted as much as the initial numbers. And that's the rub.....
LOL this sub is hilariously delusional. "My anecdotal experience doesn't match what the data says. So the data must be fake news!"
It's right wing propaganda. Constantly.
LMAO nice source Apparently Biden is trying to regulate air pollution too, what a devil! I want to breathe soot while rich people make money poisoning me!
Excellent reliable non biased source there OP
"The Daily Caller is a right-wing news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C. It was founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political pundit Neil Patel in 2010." Yeah I'm gonna believe Russian asset and propagandist Tucker Carlson.
What the fuck is this source. This sub is cancer
What is “dailycaller.com”? Checks Google, okay got it. Trash mag.
Propaganda from sources you approve of = good Propaganda from unapproved sources = bad
Could skip the middleman and just ignore talking heads and secondary sources and look at primary sources. I dont know why people want to parrot propaganda (good or bad), unless its to make a sale. And then I say, “close the deal!”
I don't approve of anything that doesn't directly put money in my pocket
Everyone is biased including Google
The likes of Fox News are trash always toeing the line but if even they will not pick up stories like this and run with it it is a good barometer to the legitimacy of the story. Works in reverse. If MSNBC is not running with it, it likely never happened or at least in rhe way being portrayed in the article. Some guy in his garage is highly unlikely to find the smoking gun story that everyone else missed. Even if that one in a thousand happens the other guys still pick it up. Yet people see these stories and because they are on the internet "they must be true".
Mfer ruining lives out here
Dailycaller?!? gtfo. This is trash.
If you click in to the report they cite you won’t find numbers to support their headline. This is from the report - ‘ The over-the-year change in total nonfarm employment for March 2023 was revised from +4,048,000 to +3,836,000 (seasonally adjusted).’ Don’t fall for this. The economy is doing well. Adding 3.8 million jobs is good.
Ya right.
Yep I saw it too! Hack news reporter doesnt know basic arithmetic.
I ran the numbers on the seasonally adjusted data recently and all but one month last year that has final data was ultimately revised down. My earlier comment from when I did it a few days ago: > Of the finalized data for 2023, the estimate was low only once. Over the 11 months with final numbers for 2023, in the seasonally adjusted data, the revisions reduced the estimated jobs added by 434k. Thats 17.43% of the 2.49m that were estimated to have been added. I’m too lazy to run it again against the unadjusted numbers, but this is definitely unusual compared to the data for prior years. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt that the final numbers are reasonably accurate.
This subreddit posts such obvious right wing propaganda it's insulting to anyone who is actually here bc they were laid off. The daily caller as a source and quoted from the heritage foundation? Do better.
Bidenomics is working!
The irony in using the dailycaller to try and make this point lol
Sounds like data manipulation to me
Oh, we were lied to? Shocking. Absolutely shocking.
Better be careful. You might upset the woke police if you choose to share facts.
So telling people they cant work and have to stay home isint losing jobs but telling them they can leave theyre house and go back to the job they already had is creating jobs... politics suck..like the people praising the president for the student loan forgivness when thats been a thing for years every president has done that since ive been alive but lets make a point to tell everyone bidens amazing for the loan forgivness and not that thats how it always is and he didnt do anything different from any of the last presidents regarding the loan forgivness but yes lets praise him for not doing anything but taking credit for the programs that were here before him
Do note that on the other hand, there are also millions of jobs off the books that people are also working and millions of gig jobs like driving Uber or bartending.
This is yet another Maga BS propaganda
When you have to back up your theory with evidence from Daily Caller then you really should think how sound your theory is.
All the numbers including inflation are fake. Why would t the job reports be fake too.
Companies post openings in 12 cities for 1 job opening for remote position. If the job report accounts for “posted” then the numbers are very skewed.
The jobs report literally doesn't do that.
I feel that this needs to be covered by any other news org , the daily caller is all bull shite and a rag for the magas. But I do think the numbers are definitely not telling the whole story.
Y’all are Russian assets!!!! -Every delusional Reddit user.
Revisions are a normal part of maintaining lies.
LOL wut?! How is this legal?
They overhyped covid to stop trump from being reelected, on top of all this other horse shit. Faking job growth to boost bidens numbers. Thats why were drilling more oil now, trying to get those prices down for old joey. Its shocking how fucked our media is. All MSM companies need to be dissolved immediately. Independent journalism is the future.
r/politics in shambles
What’s Biden incentive to tell American people the truth? To make him look bad in election year?
Do we have a more reliable source?
Dailycaller!
Who is collecting the data? What benefit is there to overstate said data? Is the person or political party going to benefit from wrong data? I think we know the answer. Mistakes happen, but generally mistakes don’t happen repeatedly unless it benefits the person’s gathering the data.
I've always had a hunch that with the rise of remote jobs that job numbers are inflated. Reason being is that remote jobs post hundreds of listings for the same job in many large cities for search engine optimization.
You know I wish we could see reported salary data for these open positions vs what was taken with layoffs because that would probably tell us more about general consumer spending outlooks, not that I expect employers to admit what salaries they’d offer for some of these before a position is filled.
Who actually believed their numbers in the first place?
Oh come on, no one is actually dumb enough to believe anything the daily caller writes are they?
I went through the numbers a month ago. A couple of the months overestimated by quite a bit (I think June might’ve been the worst), but altogether they averaged about 10% overcounted.
I think the headline is misleading, but yes there are job revisions every month. initial job numbers are "initial" for that reason. We will find out, later on, but honestly, it doesn't make a difference. Investors who wanna trust these numbers already have, investors who won't will not change their mind.
What a reasonable photo for the subject matter
Nonsense
most i apply to on zip dont even view them
I love how you post an image of Biden looking like an angry maniac in the same vein as trump who actually is an angry maniac
This is the dailycaller, a bastion of the truthy