One of former President Barack Obama’s leading economic advisers said Friday that a theory floated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman alleging Trump influenced the Bureau of Labor Statistics is completely baseless.
Krugman said in a tweet that “you can’t completely discount the possibility that they’ve gotten to the BLS,” referring to the latest numbers that say the economy is recovering much faster than expected from the coronavirus pandemic.
This being the Trump era, you can’t completely discount the possibility that they’ve gotten to the BLS, but it’s much more likely that the models used to produce these numbers — they aren’t really raw data — have gone haywire in a time of pandemic 3/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) June 5, 2020
Soon after, the former chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Jason Furman, shot back on Twitter, stating that such a theory can be discounted 100%.
You can 100% discount the possibility that Trump got to the BLS. Not 98% discount, not 99.9% discount, but 100% discount.
BLS has 2,400 career staff of enormous integrity and one political appointee with no scope to change this number. https://t.co/Cden6rQyN6
— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) June 5, 2020
“BLS has 2,400 career staff of enormous integrity and one political appointee with no scope to change this number.” Furman added.
Krugman later apologized on Friday for his part in raising such a conspiracy.
Getting a lot of outraged pushback over even allowing the possibility of something amiss at BLS. I was just covering myself, because so many weird things have happened lately. But I apologize for any suggestion that a highly professional agency might have been corrupted. 1/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) June 5, 2020
The American unemployment rate, which was at its highest level since record keeping began in 1948, saw a drop from 14.7% in April to 13.3% in May, according to FOX News. (RELATED: Labor Department: 1.9 Million New Jobless Claims)
Employers also added 2.5 million jobs last month, according to FOX, setting another record for the biggest monthly increase in new jobs ever.