When economic data gets politicized in the Trump economy, women’s financial security is the first thing at risk.
Last week, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was abruptly fired, just hours after releasing a disappointing jobs report. The White House claims that the August report was “rigged,” but economists and labor experts are calling the move catastrophic. When that data becomes politicized in the Trump economy, or simply unreliable, it’s women who stand to lose the most.
Why should women care? Because this isn’t just bureaucratic drama. The BLS provides the data that determines your Social Security benefits, your tax bracket, and the cost of everything from groceries to gas.
This week on the HerMoney Podcast, Jean is joined by labor economist Kathryn Edwards to talk about the latest news out of the Trump economy and how revisions to labor data could affect your investments.
What Is the BLS and Why Does It Matter?
Jean Chatzky: The first time I ever remember looking at BLS data, it wasn’t a jobs number; it was actually a list that the BLS published of jobs that were likely to be more in demand in the coming years, and it was on paper at that point. We have come a long way since then, but this idea that we get a set number of jobs numbers, and then we go back and we fix them when we have more information, is nothing new.
Kathryn Edwards: No, and in fact you can actually track the size of revisions going back to the seventies. So here’s how the BLS works. When they come up with data, like the number of jobs added in the economy, they’re gonna send a hundred thousand surveys out to employers. It arrives at the employer’s office, and it gives them a set of questions that they need to answer, and then they’re supposed to send it back. The timeline for this is really tight because they basically need to get a survey in mid-July that they can turn back with enough time for the numbers to be released by Friday, August 1st. There’s almost no time for turnaround, so the BLS basically has two options. Either they can sit on the data and not release anything publicly until enough surveys have come in, which means we wouldn’t know what happened to the labor market in July until October.
The other option is that they release the number, basically the best number that they have, as early as they have it, in order to inform decision-making. So, they split the difference. They produce the number three times the first estimate, which comes out the first month, and then the next two estimates are the revisions. So by the first estimate, they have like 60% of the surveys. By the third, they have closer to 90%, and so each revision is reflecting that they got additional data.
What the Trump Economy Means for Women Right Now
Jean Chatzky: You have said that the numbers reported that we are in a dangerously weak labor market. Does that mean that we are now on the verge of a recession? Because I know that economic growth actually was up from the prior quarter.
Kathryn Edwards: The Trump administration has three policies that it has championed louder and larger than others. It’s gonna slash the federal workforce, it’s gonna deport immigrants, and it’s going to start trade wars and institute tariffs. All three of those are contractionary. They will make the economy smaller. They’ll hurt workers, they’ll create labor shortages, and they’ll increase prices. The question since January 20th has been: when are these bad things gonna show up in the aggregate data? And many people have been watching because economists like myself have said these are all terrible ideas. These are all very bad for the economy.
What is so worrying right now it’s not just that we’re flying into a storm; it’s that we’re flying blind, or we risk flying blind if we don’t have good data.
Why There’s Still Room for Optimism
Jean Chatzky: And yet, you’re an optimist.
Kathryn Edwards: I’m an optimist. I am.
Jean Chatzky: So, what do we have to be optimistic about?
Kathryn Edwards: How little we’ve tried. You can’t feel like we can’t get better when all we’ve tried is almost nothing. What have policymakers done to address the crisis that is the crippling cost of childcare? It’s nothing. The answer is nothing. I think the optimism comes from knowing that we have so many solutions that have been tested in different localities, and we have a really good idea that they’ll work, and we’ve never tried them. Well, that’s awesome. It would be very different if we had tried everything and nothing had succeeded. And I think my optimism comes from knowing in this long view of the US economy, just how addressable so many of these problems are. And I think there’s so much hope there.
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