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Molly Butler / Media Matters

Research/Study Research/Study

MAGA media respond to annual jobs report revisions with conspiracy theories

Pro-Trump media claim that the routine BLS revisions are “cooking the books” and “election interference”

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published

Earlier this week, economists with Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo predicted that upcoming benchmark revisions scheduled to be published on August 21 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics would show a negative revision of up to 1 million net jobs created over the past year. (The actual preliminary estimate published this morning was -818,000 jobs.) In response to these negative expectations, right-wing commentators, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and advisers to his campaign swung into action.

Fox News and other pro-Trump media trafficked in conspiracy theories, even falsely suggesting that the United States is in recession, in response to the BLS’ annual benchmark revisions of employment data between March 2023-24. They ludicrously claimed that jobs numbers had been fabricated to benefit the Biden administration and that the BLS was “cooking the books” in service of the Democrats’ presidential campaign. 

The right-wing histrionics neglected to mention how the same BLS published negative revisions during the Trump administration, including -501,000 in 2019, nor that the same benchmarking process in 2022 actually revealed that the government had significantly undercounted job growth. Additionally, as Bloomberg reported, this revision is routine and occurs every year as “a more accurate but less timely data source” that “covers nearly all US jobs” becomes available.

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  • MAGA media spin conspiracy theories, false suggestions of recession over announcement of jobs count revision

    • Right-wing commentator ZeroHedge: “On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will downward revise jobs for the April 2023-March 2024 period by up to 1 million. This means that all ‘beats’ recorded in the past year will have been misses and the US job market is in far worse shape than the admin would admit.” [Twitter/X, 8/18/24]
    • Trump senior adviser Jason Miller: “This isn’t a ‘revision’ … this is a LIE! And it’s Election Interference!” Miller added: “The Harris Administration has been cooking the books the entire time and now it’s caught up to them!” [Twitter/X, 8/20/24]
    • Fox contributor Charlie Hurt: The revision “really does beg the question whether or not they’re using the Labor Department as an arm of their political campaigns, to either hide bad news or make up good news to help Democrats win elections.” Hurt added: “It is so glaring. It is so obvious and it kind of makes you wonder why we even have a Department of Labor.” Fox Business anchor David Asman agreed: “Yeah, well, it sounds conspiratorial but sometimes these conspiracies have some truth to them.” [Fox Business, Kudlow, 8/20/24]
    • The Gateway Pundit: “BREAKING: Biden and Harris Were Cooking the Books the Whole Time! 1 Million Jobs VANISH in Downward Revision.” [The Gateway Pundit, 8/20/24]
    • Newsmax host Rob Schmitt: “They have so many ways to trick you into thinking that their economies are good.” Newsmax guest Peter Schiff said, “It’s been obvious for years now that the employment statistics were an illusion created by the statisticians.” Schiff also pushed the lie that “all these net jobs went to nonnative-born Americans. I mean they went to immigrants.” [Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, 8/20/24; Media Matters, 2/20/24]
    • Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo: “You are talking up to a million jobs that were basically fake.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/20/24]
    • Fox host Laura Ingraham called for “an investigation into how this could happen.” She added: “This is not just a rounding error. So, this is a real scandal. … [to] regular people, this just looks like putting the finger on the scale to make Joe Biden look better and Kamala Harris look better going into an election cycle.” Ingraham later said that the jobs numbers are “fraudulent. It was wrong. And I think it was fraudulent.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/20/24]
    • Conservative Substack author “amuse” came up with a “payback” conspiracy theory that “the administration has been forced to negatively revise economic data for 12 of the last 14 months - presumably to help the president get re-elected. Now that Biden has been forced out is he sabotaging Kamala Harris for stabbing him in the back?” After the BLS was late in releasing the revisions, amuse posted: “COVERUP? The Bureau of Labor Statistics missed the scheduled 10 a.m. Eastern release of its annual payroll revisions, and there's still no update.” [Twitter/X, 8/20/24, 8/21/24]
    • Former president and current GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump: “MASSIVE SCANDAL! The Harris-Biden Administration has been caught fraudulently manipulating Job Statistics to hide the true extent of the Economic Ruin they have inflicted upon America.” [Truth Social, 8/21/24]
    • Washington Times columnist and Trump staffer Tim Murtaugh: “Another way to describe a jobs number revision is that the Biden-Harris admin LIED to make their record look better than it really was. Up to a million jobs they claimed to have ‘created’ aren’t actually there and now it’s biting them because they cooked the books.” [Twitter/X, 8/21/24]
    • “Trump War Room” account: “Kamala was cooking the books the whole time — and lying to the American people while she did it.” [Twitter/X, 8/20/24]
    • GOP strategist and Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita: “THIS IS A LIE - NOT A REVISION!” [Twitter/X, 8/20/24]
    • Citing ZeroHedge, right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist Bill Mitchell wrote: “You gotta love these HUGE downward revisions to jobs numbers when no one is paying attention. How do you miss by a million?” [Twitter/X, 8/20/24]
    • Fox Business anchor David Asman: Jobs numbers revision shows “a real, genuine slowdown we’re in the midst of right now.” [Fox Business, Kudlow, 8/20/24]
    • Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt: The existence of jobs numbers revisions “pokes holes in the Biden administration narrative that the economy is strong.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/21/24]

  • The BLS revises its jobs count every year, and economists explained that even with the downward revision, jobs growth was strong

    • Wall Street Journal economic correspondent Nick Timiraos: “While some people might point to such revisions as an example of ‘cooking the books,’ this is not true. It's actually evidence that there's a high fidelity to making sure the numbers are as accurate as they can be.” In a lengthy post, Timiraos outlined a series of frequently asked questions about the BLS benchmark revision process, noting that this August figure is only preliminary and will not be finalized for another six months, and specifically debunking accusations that a negative revision is proof that BLS was “cooking the books” over the prior year. In a subsequent post, Timiraos explained that the expected negative revisions were not unprecedented — for example, the data in 2009 were revised down by a similar amount. [TwitterX, 8/20/24, 8/20/24]
    • Responding to Trump adviser Jason Miller, Center for Economic and Policy Research senior economist Dean Baker wrote: “This should be a massive story in the sense that Trump is pushing an absurd lie about a revision to the data that occurs every year in August and is scheduled months ahead of time.” [Twitter/X, 8/20/24]
    • Niskanen Center employment policy fellow Matt Darling replied to Miller: “This is a standard revision. Similar revisions happened during the Trump administration.” [Twitter/X, 8/20/24]
    • Yale Budget Lab director of economics Ernie Tedeschi responded to Miller: “If this were true, then Trump cooked the books too, because the Aug 2019 preliminary benchmark revision was -501K (very close to the final in Jan 2020).” He added: “Of course, it's not true. @BLS_gov revises b/c they have integrity and want the best estimate possible.” [Twitter/X, 8/20/24]
    • MarketWatch's Jeffry Bartash: “The annual update to U.S. employment gains is late, as is often the case.” With the delayed publication of the Labor Department's jobs revisions, MarketWatch reporter Jeffry Bartash noted that the delay was hardly abnormal: “The report usually doesn't make waves and investors rarely anticipate it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has often been a bit, well, tardy, to post the numbers on its website.” [MarketWatch, 8/21/24]
    • Tedeschi: “If the final revision ends up the same as this preliminary revision, average monthly payroll growth over Apr 2023-Mar 2024 would have been +174K/m rather than +242K/m, still a solid number.” [Twitter/X, 8/21/24]
    • Ziprecruiter chief economist Julia Pollak: “This one is quite a biggie, but the monthly payroll gain remains pretty strong post-revision.” [Twitter/X, 8/21/24]
    • Burning Glass Institute economic research director Guy Berger: “We’re not in recession” over this revision — the data show that “post-revision employment growth will remain quite solid” and “this revision applies to data pretty far in the rear view mirror.” [Twitter/X, 8/18/24]