U.S. payroll growth totals 177,000 in April, topping expectations

[Wiz Imp]

14. Correct. Having worked on the Current Employment Statistics program for close to 35 years,

i can say that the jobs numbers for the entire history of the program (like 85 years) until now have always been 100% honest. There has never been any political influence causing BLS to manipulate the numbers.

That said, it is understandable why people are concerned that may finally change with this administration. However, there is absolutely ZERO evidence of any data manipulation by BLS to this point. All evidence points to the data still being honest. To be clear, the numbers are not nearly as good as they may first appear. March job totals were revised downward by 43000 and February by 15000 for a total of 58000 fewer jobs than previously reported. If you remove those from the reported April gains, you find that the April Number is only 119,000 above the previously reported March level. That is in fact below projections.

Now there is one part of this jobs report that I do believe is highly questionable. Federal Government jobs were down very slightly and are only down a total of 26000 since January. The administration has made a big deal out of cutting hundreds of thousands of Federal jobs. So why aren't they showing up in the total jobs numbers yet? Having experience with how the Government reports their jobs for this survey program, a slight delay in them showing up in the jobs report is believable. However, I would expect a significantly larger drop to have been reported by now. The Federal jobs numbers are reported to BLS by OPM. Is it possible OPM is purposely delaying showing the drop in Federal employment to BLS? I have no proof that is happening, but there is definite reason for suspicion.