Would Bush and co. be able to manipulate job numbers?

I wonder if the Bush administration could weild influence on the department that puts out the final two reports of the job numbers before the election. They have to know it is an important, perhaps very important number, and they would like to have a big positive surprise, instead of negative news.

I know the department (is it congressional budget office?) that releases jobs data is supposed to be non-partisan, so how feasible is this? Or is it unlikely they would do it or get away with it.

headed by a WH shill.

Same as the fake numbers the GOP (through the administration's acctg office) gave to Congress to get the Medicare Reform Act passed. Congress was ticked off, when it found out. I saw some hearings on this with the acctg office's people, who stated that they were prevented from giving the "real" numbers to members of Congress by their superiors in the administration (WH shills).

They set up a new measurement of jobs, called Household Survey, or some other ridiculous thing.

They call people & poll them on jobs. And they are trying to substitute these numbers for CBO.

Also, if they give bad numbers to CBO, it is worthless.

Remember, Elaine Chao, wife of Mitch McConell, is Sec of Labor. She has done her best to lower wages, outsource jobs, & bring in workers for jobs { Americans will not do.}

She is really Sec of CEOs & other wealthy fat cats.

like put them up as higher then a month or two later readjusted them???

No doubt they will try to make it pretty

rising, but with revised 2.8% for 2nd qtr., the result should be poor for August - Unless they again change the formula - which would be too obvious. The payroll job report number should not help Bush in this ellection. It is disturbing that the payroll survey's birth/death adjustment is not tied back to a real count, but just keeping the same formula will hurt the GOP this time.

The only payroll report jobs number they have a shot at for getting a good number is the one released in the first week of October. But the indications are that that will be poor also.

As a prior poster has noted, the household survey that is used to get the ratio called the unemployment rate - a number that has been good for Bush as folks have not admitted they were totally unemployed, while some also said they were so tired of looking that they had totally dropped out of the labor pool - has a total employed estimate that is used in the ratio.

As long as the total employed survey result is biased in the same direction as the total unemployed estimate, the ratio is pretty solid.

But the GOP - despite knowing that Greenspan has said the the total employed used in this ratio is not reliable enough to use for the monthly job change number - are going to still try to sell it to the media

Anything to get them past Nov.

It will be interesting to see if the media whores try to resell the GOP idea that folks are not unemployed because we are all "consultants" at home who are just having a problem finding clients.

Or if the media will decide that it is truth telling to switch the job growth source survey you use when you are not getting the result you want.

at a book signing a few weeks ago. He said that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is one of the few remaining federal departments/agencies that has resisted political manipulation (at least so far). Krugman believes that many other departments have been successfully twisted to the Administration's agenda.

As partial proof of his point that the BLS has not been completely subverted, he pointed to the dismal 32K jobs report (about a month ago or so). If the BLS had gone completely over to the dark side, this number would have been suppressed.

said the formula was wrong and needed to be corrected same time saying mcdonald jobs should be counted as production. march on numbers went up, though always a couple weeks later adjusted numbers brought them back down

i have yet to see any of bush studies or numbers to have confidence in, they have come up wrong cause of error or this or that. i believe none of them