New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said on Friday that President Trump may have falsified the results of a favorable Labor Department jobs report.
"This being the Trump era, you can't completely discount the possibility that they've gotten to the [Bureau of Labor Statistics]," Krugman said in a tweet Friday morning. "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."
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
The May jobs report, released Friday, was expected to show a 19.8 percent unemployment rate but instead revealed a rate of 13.3 percent. The April jobs report showed a 14.4 percent unemployment rate, the worst since the Great Depression.
Jason Furman, an Obama-era chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, denounced Krugman within half an hour, saying Trump could not have doctored the report. He added that Krugman's implication undermined the integrity of career Labor Department officials.
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
New York Times contributor and Brookings Institution fellow Justin Wolfers also denounced Krugman's claim, calling it "a bad tweet" and saying the employment data "weren't tampered with and Paul knows it."
This is a bad tweet.
Paul, you're right to point out that the underlying models/processes used to produce jobs numbers are less reliable during a pandemic.
But these data weren't tampered with and Paul knows it. The economic debate doesn't need this garbage innuendo. Do better https://t.co/R6tLHldF00
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) June 5, 2020
Krugman later apologized for suggesting a "highly professional agency might have been corrupted."
"I was just covering myself, because so many weird things have happened lately," he wrote.
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
President Donld Trump held a news conference Friday morning on the decline in unemployment as the economy begins to recover from coronavirus shutdowns.
"They thought the number would be a loss of nine million jobs, and it was a gain of almost three million jobs," Trump said. "This leads us on to a long period of growth. We'll go back to having the greatest economy anywhere in the world ... and I think we're going to have a very good upcoming few months."