See post 10.

Nothing remotely nefarious about it - unless you believe Obama engaged in similar nefarious behavior in 2013.

That way the economy can be whatever the One True Leader says it is.

It would be near impossible to get away with reporting manipulated data so the only logical option thy have to suppress bad data is to simply discontinue reporting it.

Wiz Imp worked at BLS. Wiz Imp knows a heck of a lot more about it than you ever will, even if you began to gather information.

Do you realize you sound like a MAGA cult member who said Biden faked all his numbers? Conspiracy theories are bad no matter which side does it.

The Commissioner can't fudge the data which is all public and all reviewed by outside economists too. Procedures are public documented and calculations are double checked against the original data.

It is a terrible smear on people to claim that just because they were not fired they are now suddenly corrupt.

You keep making the claim with no understanding and no information. Please stop the disinformation.

by Bernardo de La Paz, so I'm not going to waste much time on you. I'll just make one final comment.

I'll assume you agree that the data prior to the BLS Commissioner being fired was not manipulated. If it was manipulated for Trump then he wouldn't have fired her. (If you believe it was being manipulated before that, then you're a lost cause).

BLS, despite being an agency of about 2300 employees, has exactly 1 political appointee - the BLS Commissioner. That position is currently vacant while Trump's nominee awaits Senate confirmation. In the meantime, there is an acting BLS Commissioner (Bill Wiatrowski) who is a lifelong civil servant for BLS who is not now nor has he ever been a political appointee . He has served as acting Commissioner multiple times under both Republicans and Democrats. I know Bill. He is a good honest man. As long as he is the Acting Commissioner, I can guarantee you that the BLS data remain honest. (Whether you choose to believe it or not - that is the truth).

Maybe it's bad.

On a regular basis I refute the automatic cynics who automatically say "the data is corrupt" because the cynics are just shitting on the professionals.

But in this case, the decision to not release comes from the acting Commissioner (I'm certain but have no specific info), the only political appointee, from above the level of the professionals. Normally, the report is on the Commissioner's desk Wednesday morning and is released Friday morning.

(insert the term - "embargoed" ) and is released Friday morning".

BLS, despite being an agency of about 2300 employees, has exactly 1 political appointee - the BLS Commissioner. That position is currently vacant while Trump's nominee awaits Senate confirmation. In the meantime, there is an acting BLS Commissioner (Bill Wiatrowski) who is a lifelong civil servant for BLS who is not now nor has he ever been a political appointee. He has served as acting Commissioner multiple times under both Reoublicans and Democrats.

and refresh CNBC & Yahoo! Finance (who do this regularly) waiting for the report to release and get an article from either.

I'll also do a search for their X post that also has the link to their embargoed release (to include in my OPs for "the source" ).

and it will show a link to their jobs report at the top when it's available (at 830 AM ET sharp on whatever day; not always first Friday, there are about 1-2 exceptions to that each year, the last one was Thursday July 3 because Friday was July 4).

I already have hundreds of tabs in a row, a bunch that I am normally refreshing (and doing CNBC's is bad enough as it is), so...

to see the numbers first (again for regular people) and easy to remember: "bls.gov"

Irregular people include BLS insiders and as I understand it, certain media outlets still are allowed an advanced view (so they can write some kind of story and have it ready for the appropriate moment), though I remember there was a thread several months ago about doing away with that, and maybe they have?

that you can get dizzy (and I know you guys dive into the separate tables and stuff)!

I think some like Jeff Cox on CNBC may get an advanced copy but I expect they have someone else doing the initial headlines (and they are real quick with "breaking news" headlines before any copy is ready to publish) and he might get a couple lines of summary in and then work on the detail (including plugging data into graphs, etc).

but yes, the linked-to "summary", always https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm , goes on and on.

And it's annoying as hell when they keep using the words, "changed little" over and over again and again

Yes, I also look at the main table for both the Establishment Survey (err, REPORT), and the Household Survey (err, REPORT) because at a glance it tells me what the important but non-headline numbers like Labor Force, Labor Force Participation Rate, Employment, employment population ratio, civilian non-institutional population and a couple other things did as far as changes over the last month.

Also, I page down to the bottom of the summary where they have the Revisions. As you know, I consider the revisions to the previous 2 months' payroll jobs numbers to be just as important as the latest month's headline number. E.g. in the August report, the headline [non-farm payroll] jobs number gain was +22,000. The previous two months were revised down by a combined 21,000, and thus the total number of jobs was only 1,000 more than were reported the previous month. To me, the +1,000 is the key takeaway number on job growth.

I also like to average the last 3 months' growth numbers and last 12 months' growth number. In the August report, I also found the 4 month average interesting:

3 months: 29k/mo
4 months: 27k/mo
12 months: 122k/mo

For the deep-dive nerds, these don't include the 911k downward revision of the April 2024 thru March 2025 period, as that is a preliminary report (the BLS data series doesn't show them either) https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001

As before, the news summary is https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm ,

The "News release charts" link is at the bottom of news summary -- https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/

Some things to note:

"click and drag within the chart to zoom in on time periods" (not sticky unfortunately)

Can click on items in the legend that want to display/undisplay.

Hover mouse over a line that want to make much stronger / bolder. It will also pop up the nearest data point - value & mm/yy

And thank you for your own home-made ones too!

From the news release summary as before: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Click on "The PDF version of the news release" at the bottom of the page. Result: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

this has the two chief graphs: unemployment rate and non-farm payroll jobs at the top:



This 40 page PDF has all the tables (unfortunately only the two graphs). I always download and save.

Why the news release summary doesn't have these two graphs, I have no reason why.

That first graph has some flashing yellow signs!

If they don't want the government to shut down, they shouldn't shut it down.

That shutdown lasted 16 days and they released the data once the shutdown ended.

Nothing remotely nefarious is going on. BLS still has the revised schedule announcement from 2013 available on their website here:

https://www.bls.gov/bls/updated_release_schedule.htm

and could continue their work.

I remember that was the same situation with my agency during the 1995 - 1996 shutdown where we had an appropriation, but few others did, so we were going to work in a multi-agency building that was nearly empty.

Actually it's the taxpayers who should be having the shutdown.