The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General announced Wednesday that they have opened an inquiry into the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) methods for gathering and publishing key economic data for the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index.
In a letter sent by Laura Nicolosi, the department’s Assistant Inspector General for Audit, to the BLS’s acting director, William Wiatrowski, the OIG announced the intent to review the department. The letter stated that “our focus will be on the challenges and related mitigating strategies for (1) collecting PPI and CPI data, and (2) collecting and reporting, including revising, monthly employment data,” adding that the BLS recently issued “a large downward revision of its estimate of new jobs in the monthly Employment Situation Report.”
The review comes just a day after the BLS announced its latest annual revisions, which showed nearly one million fewer people were employed in the year ending in March than earlier figures had indicated. Nicolosi did not specifically mention the revisions in her letter, however, she referenced worries linked to a recent “large downward revision” in job growth that appeared in the agency’s monthly employment reports. Nicolosi’s letter said the investigation would not only examine employment data but also look closely at the production of two critical inflation indicators: the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index.
The scrutiny also follows last month’s dismissal of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, who was removed by Trump after the agency cut job growth estimates for May and June by a combined 258,000. Without evidence, Trump alleged that McEntarfer had manipulated the figures for political reasons.
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