Thirty percent confidence in Labor Department figures

By Noel S. Williams

Here’s part of a potential job announcement for the Bureau of Labor Statistics: “Data scientists and statisticians with an assessed application score of 70% will be considered.”

Why such low standards? Apparently, being “accurate” to within 30% is good enough for government workers who compile labor statistics.

It’s common knowledge that the Labor Department’s monthly jobs reports are constantly revised downwards. Their statistical waywardness was just compounded. A Labor Department report encompassing annual benchmark revisions to the nonfarm payroll numbers was released on August 8, 2024, covering the period of April 2023 through March, 2024. The upshot of it all: actual non-farm job growth was nearly 30% lower than previously reported.

Thirty percent! No wonder Kamala is running away from Bidenomics. That’s a huge discrepancy, perhaps prompting one to entertain notions of other things that comprise thirty percent of something else -- or not. For example…

In the 20th and 21st centuries, no Presidential candidate has enjoyed more than a 30% margin of the popular vote.
Thirty percent is about the amount of land constituting the Earth’s surface.
Even during the Great Depression, the unemployment rate was less than 30%.
In the United States, there is about 31 percent food loss at retail and consumer levels.
A thirty percent chance of rain is enough to change outdoor plans.
Though the rate fluctuates with changing circumstances, the thirty percent rule advises one allocate about 30% of one’s income toward housing. That’s a large chunk of non-discretionary income.
Even after a black swan event, rarely does the stock market swoon by thirty percent, or more. In fact, the S&P 500 has gained roughly 10.7% annually since its 1957 inception.
About thirty percent of likely U.S. voters think the country is heading in the right direction.
The “right direction” folks must be nuts, but not in the intersection of one of Kamala’s possible Venn diagrams that indicates that about 30 percent of young liberal women are satisfied with American society. By contrast, about 70 percent of young conservative women are sanguine about their treatment in American society.
The Thirty Percent Coalition aims to dumb-down American in behalf of DEI. The must have burrowed their thirty tentacles into the Labor Department already.

In short, thirty percent of anything is a lot of it, but here’s the kicker: per the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, “overall employment of mathematicians and statisticians is projected to grow 30 percent from 2022 to 2032, much faster than the average for all occupations.”

Employers, especially government agencies like the Labor Department, must be 100% desperate to recruit. Judging by the wide variances of their outputs, perhaps they even consider candidates who lack 30% of the requisite skills, as long as they’re 100% DEI-qualified.

The BLS brags that it produces “some of the nation’s most sensitive and important economic information.” Given their constant revisions in monthly jobs numbers, and an annual job growth revision 30% lower than original estimates, I have only a 30% confidence level in them.