I think you’re right about the data being of suspicious quality, Peter. I suspect some fundamental changes have been made since Trump implemented new policies that effectively mean all of the different agencies and surveys are comparing the apples of the Biden years to the oranges of the Trump changes. The problem is, we can’t accurately crunch the numbers without knowing how the Authorities have changed or reinterpreted the underlying definitions, metrics, requirements, etc.
We know that under Biden, Human Resources departments were required to follow DEI mandates, which Trump has now eliminated. We know that Trump has changed policies on worker visas and other details of hiring. We know that Trump has deported somewhere in excess of one million people, which will skew hiring in ways that may not be comparable to previous eras. How, exactly, are the data-collecting agencies dealing with all of these changes in their data collections, algorithms, adjustments, and so on? We don’t know. Anyone who has taken a course in statistics knows you can massage data in numerous ways to get different final results in your analysis. We don’t know what changes the agencies have made in their data analysis. Some agencies may have kept the definitions, algorithms, and metrics essentially unchanged, while others may have tweaked and modified considerably. The result is that they are now getting analysis conclusions that don’t agree. I don’t know how you could track this down, Peter. Probably someone with access to all of the government algorithms would have to do it.
All we can conclude at this point regarding employment is that Trump needs to do better.
I am going to briefly remind everyone of the ground rules for commenting on my articles:
Be civil and respectful. Hateful and bigoted commentary will simply be removed without warning.
No Spam. If I think the comment is spam it will be removed without warning.
If I decide something is rude, it will be deleted. Period. End of Sentence. End of Discussion.
If I see someone posting a comment to complain about their rudeness being deleted, they will be banned. Period. End of Sentence. End of Discussion.
Here we are civil and respectful towards each other--and here I am the sole arbiter of what constitutes "civil and respectful."
You really are Magnificent, Peter!
I think you’re right about the data being of suspicious quality, Peter. I suspect some fundamental changes have been made since Trump implemented new policies that effectively mean all of the different agencies and surveys are comparing the apples of the Biden years to the oranges of the Trump changes. The problem is, we can’t accurately crunch the numbers without knowing how the Authorities have changed or reinterpreted the underlying definitions, metrics, requirements, etc.
We know that under Biden, Human Resources departments were required to follow DEI mandates, which Trump has now eliminated. We know that Trump has changed policies on worker visas and other details of hiring. We know that Trump has deported somewhere in excess of one million people, which will skew hiring in ways that may not be comparable to previous eras. How, exactly, are the data-collecting agencies dealing with all of these changes in their data collections, algorithms, adjustments, and so on? We don’t know. Anyone who has taken a course in statistics knows you can massage data in numerous ways to get different final results in your analysis. We don’t know what changes the agencies have made in their data analysis. Some agencies may have kept the definitions, algorithms, and metrics essentially unchanged, while others may have tweaked and modified considerably. The result is that they are now getting analysis conclusions that don’t agree. I don’t know how you could track this down, Peter. Probably someone with access to all of the government algorithms would have to do it.
All we can conclude at this point regarding employment is that Trump needs to do better.