Claim: Census Bureau Faked Unemployment Numbers.

AluminumTheory

Senior Member.
http://nypost.com/2013/11/18/census-faked-2012-election-jobs-report/


In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.

The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.

Ironically, it was Labor’s demanding standards that left the door open to manipulation.

Labor requires Census to achieve a 90 percent success rate on its interviews — meaning it needed to reach 9 out of 10 households targeted and report back on their jobs status.

Census currently has six regions from which surveys are conducted. The New York and Philadelphia regions, I’m told, had been coming up short of the 90 percent.

Philadelphia filled the gap with fake interviews.

“It was a phone conversation — I forget the exact words — but it was, ‘Go ahead and fabricate it’ to make it what it was,” Buckmon told me.

Census, under contract from the Labor Department, conducts the household survey used to tabulate the unemployment rate.

Interviews with some 60,000 household go into each month’s jobless number, which currently stands at 7.3 percent. Since this is considered a scientific poll, each one of the households interviewed represents 5,000 homes in the US.

Buckmon, it turns out, was a very ambitious employee. He conducted three times as many household interviews as his peers, my source said.

By making up survey results — and, essentially, creating people out of thin air and giving them jobs — Buckmon’s actions could have lowered the jobless rate.

Buckmon said he filled out surveys for people he couldn’t reach by phone or who didn’t answer their doors.

But, Buckmon says, he was never told how to answer the questions about whether these nonexistent people were employed or not, looking for work, or have given up.

But people who know how the survey works say that simply by creating people and filling out surveys in their name would boost the number of folks reported as employed.

Census never publicly disclosed the falsification. Nor did it inform Labor that its data was tainted.

“Yes, absolutely they should have told us,” said a Labor spokesman. “It would be normal procedure to notify us if there is a problem with data collection.”

Census appears to have looked into only a handful of instances of falsification by Buckmon, although more than a dozen instances were reported, according to internal documents.

In one document from the probe, Program Coordinator Joal Crosby was ask in 2010, “Why was the suspected … possible data falsification on all (underscored) other survey work for which data falsification was suspected not investigated by the region?”

On one document seen by The Post, Crosby hand-wrote the answer: “Unable to determine why an investigation was not done for CPS,” or the Current Population Survey — the official name for the unemployment report.

With regard to the Consumer Expenditure survey, only four instances of falsification were looked into, while 14 were reported.

I’ve been suspicious of the Census Bureau for a long time.

During the 2010 Census report — an enormous and costly survey of the entire country that goes on for a full year — I suspected (and wrote in a number of columns) that Census was inexplicably hiring and firing temporary workers.

I suspected that this turnover of employees was being done purposely to boost the number of new jobs being report each month. (The Labor Department does not use the Census Bureau for its other monthly survey of new jobs — commonly referred to as the Establishment Survey.)

Last week I offered to give all the information I have, including names, dates and charges to Labor’s inspector general.

I’m waiting to hear back from Labor.

I hope the next stop will be Congress, since manipulation of data like this not only gives voters the wrong impression of the economy but also leads lawmakers, the Federal Reserve and companies to make uninformed decisions.

To cite just one instance, the Fed is targeting the curtailment of its so-called quantitative easing money-printing/bond-buying fiasco to the unemployment rate for which Census provided the false information.

So falsifying this would, in essence, have dire consequences for the country.
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From a more conspiracy centric website....

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/...e-economic-lies-the-government-is-telling-you

According to a whistleblower that has recently come forward, Census employees have been faking and manipulating U.S. employment numbers for years. In fact, it is being alleged that this manipulation was a significant reason for why the official unemployment rate dipped sharply just before the last presidential election. What you are about to read is incredibly disturbing. The numbers that the American people depend upon to make important decisions are being faked. But should we be surprised by this? After all, Barack Obama has been caught telling dozens of major lies over the past five years. At this point it is incredible that there are any Americans that still trust anything that comes out of his mouth. And of course it is not just Obama that has been lying to us. Corruption and deception are rampant throughout the entire federal government, and this has been the case for years. Now that some light is being shed on this, hopefully the American people will respond with overwhelming outrage and disgust.
The whistleblower that I mentioned above has been speaking to John Crudele of the New York Post. In his new article entitled "Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report", he says that the huge decline in the unemployment rate in September 2012 was "manipulated"...

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

Two years earlier, the Census had actually caught an employee "fabricating data", but according to this whistleblower the corruption at the Census Bureau goes much deeper than that...

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked.

The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.

Well, is it really such a big deal that some of the unemployment numbers were faked?

After all, hasn't the unemployment rate been consistently going down anyway?

Unfortunately, as you will see below, that is simply not the case. The following are five massive economic lies that the government has been telling you...

"The Unemployment Rate Has Been Steadily Going Down"

According to the official government numbers, the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen all the way down to 7.3 percent.

That sounds really good, and it would seem to imply that a higher percentage of the American people are now working.

Sadly, that is not the truth at all.

Posted below is one of my favorite charts. The employment-population ratio measures the percentage of the working age population that actually has a job. As you can see, this number fell dramatically during the last recession and since the end of 2009 it has remained remarkably flat. In fact, it has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 50 months in a row...



At the moment, the employment-population ratio is just one-tenth of one percent above the lowest level that it has been throughout this entire crisis.

So are we in an "employment recovery"?

Absolutely not, and anyone that tries to tell you that is lying to you.

So how is the government getting the unemployment rate to go down?

Well, they are accomplishing this by pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans have disappeared from the labor force.

According to the government, the percentage of Americans that want to work is now supposedly at a 35 year low...



If the labor force participation rate was still exactly where it was at when Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, the official unemployment rate would be about 11 percent right now. People would be running around going crazy and wondering when the "economic depression" would finally end.

But when people hear "7.3 percent", that doesn't sound so bad. It makes people feel better.

Of course if you are currently unemployed and looking for a job that doesn't exactly help you. At this point there is intense competition even for minimum wage jobs in America. For example, according to Business Insider you actually have a better statistical chance of getting into Harvard than you do of being hired at a new Wal-Mart that is opening up in the Washington D.C. area...

The store is currently combing through more than 23,000 applications for 600 available positions, reports NBC Washington.

That means that Wal-Mart will be able to hire one person for every 38 applications it receives — i.e., just 2.6% of applicants will walk out with a job.

That's more difficult than getting into Harvard. The Ivy League university accepts 6.1% of applicants.

"Inflation Is Low"

This is another lie that government officials love to tell. In particular, the boys and girls over at the Federal Reserve love to try to convince all of us that inflation is super low because it gives them an excuse to recklessly print lots more money.

But anyone that goes to the grocery store or pays bills on a regular basis knows that there is plenty of inflation in the economy. And if we were being given honest numbers, they would show that.

According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the U.S. inflation rate was still calculated the exact same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere between 8 and 10 percent today.

But the Federal Reserve certainly doesn't want everyone running around talking about "Jimmy Carter" and "stagflation" because then people would really start pressuring them to end their wild money printing schemes.

And without a doubt, what the Fed is doing is absolutely insane. The chart posted below shows that the M1 money supply has nearly doubled since the beginning of 2008...



"Quantitative Easing Is Economic Stimulus"

How many times have you heard the mainstream media tell you something along these lines...
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This will be probably gain traction pretty fast....

But here is some info regarding how unemployment numbers are calculated.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_in_the_United_States#Obtaining_data

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_Population_Survey

 
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Claims of evidence.

More investigative at this point. Doesn't seem to much to verify at this point. But I suspect this will gain traction so it's worth keeping an eye on.
 
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What's the actual story here? Some guy made up some numbers (more than twelve) to fill his quota, which might have made the results go slightly up, down, or stay the same?

Seems like there's a lot of bunk simply being repeated in the OP. What's the actual individual claim of evidence?
 
What's the actual story here? Some guy made up some numbers (more than twelve) to fill his quota, which might have made the results go slightly up, down, or stay the same?

Seems like there's a lot of bunk simply being repeated in the OP. What's the actual individual claim of evidence?
We dont know we will have to wait for a investigation . Which means its unlikely we will ever know .
 
What's the actual story here? Some guy made up some numbers (more than twelve) to fill his quota, which might have made the results go slightly up, down, or stay the same?

Seems like there's a lot of bunk simply being repeated in the OP. What's the actual individual claim of evidence?
The claim seems to be this...
The Labor Department requires that each division of the Census hit a 90% quota of households (phone or door to door). Some sections were coming up short, and according to the whistleblower Julius Buckmon, who was in a division coming up short, he was told by higher ups to literally fake the remaining households that couldn't be reached, giving inaccurate results.
It seems all we have at this point is Julius Buckmon's word.

A couple points I took:
There are supposedly more people than just Julius Buckmon doing this, although the amount is unknown. This is something time will tell.
The higher ups who gave the order never specifically said to fill in the blanks one way or the other , employed or unemployed, etc. which to me says if they really are doing this, the conspiracy would shift towards some higher ups just trying to meet their 90% quotas in a dishonest manor, but not necessarily rigging it one way or another for some political reason.
 
If people are faking data simply to meet their quota, they would generally just make the data look similar to the data they have already collected.

So it would make the data less statistically valid, as it would be based on a smaller sample, but would not necessarily change the outcome.

If someone wanted to change the outcome, a better way would simply be to tweak existing data at the collection stage.
 
What's the actual story here? Some guy made up some numbers (more than twelve) to fill his quota, which might have made the results go slightly up, down, or stay the same?

Seems like there's a lot of bunk simply being repeated in the OP. What's the actual individual claim of evidence?
Basically the claim is that Obama and or the Democratic party encouraged the census to falsify data to Make unemployment numbers to look better and win re election. I saw coverage of this on the news last night. And although info is limited at this time, I think is worth keeping an eye on because I'm sure there will be more 'info' to this story. From day one there have been CTs that claim Obama stole the 2012 election and this would end up bolstering those claims.
Not taking a side on the issue here, but rigging numbers to win re election would be a serious charge, so I think it's worth looking into.
 
Problems with the claims have been pointed out elsewhere:
http://www.businessinsider.com/ny-post-election-jobs-numbers-bls-obama-census-julius-buckmon-2013-11
The U.S. Census Bureau said Tuesday that a source named in a New York Post story claiming it had "faked" unemployment data hasn't worked at the Bureau since 2011.

A Census spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that the Census Bureau employee quoted in the story, Julius Buckmon, has not worked there since August 2011. This was first reported by CNBC's Steve Liesman.

The Post story never mentions this fact. A spokesman for the Post didn't immediately return a request for comment as to why.

"We have no reason to believe this isn't an isolated incident," the Census spokesperson told Business Insider. "This was an employee who was willfully disobeying Census procedures and disobeying the law."

...

This source is also responsible for the allegation that a weird-looking jobs report in September 2012 — which conservatives at the time suggested could have been intentionally manipulated — was "faked" to produce a decline in the unemployment rate from 8.1% in August to 7.8% in September.

The Post story also cites confidential documents — but all of the issues cited from the documents are from 2010.

The Census spokesperson said that the Bureau has more than 7,000 field representatives like Buckmon, so it would be close to impossible for one employee to have a significant effect on the overall report.

Others, like Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal, also pointed out issues with the Post's story, like the fact that the September jobs report was very much on trend with the declining unemployment rate.
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Weisanthal's piece does a very good job at looking at the actual figures, and not just some vague "whistleblower" rumors.
http://www.businessinsider.com/report-on-unemployment-rate-being-faked-2013-11
. While it's true that at the time the September Jobs Report looked very weird, in retrospect that drop-off in the unemployment rate looks totally on-trend.
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Problems with the claims have been pointed out elsewhere:
http://www.businessinsider.com/ny-post-election-jobs-numbers-bls-obama-census-julius-buckmon-2013-11
The U.S. Census Bureau said Tuesday that a source named in a New York Post story claiming it had "faked" unemployment data hasn't worked at the Bureau since 2011.

A Census spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that the Census Bureau employee quoted in the story, Julius Buckmon, has not worked there since August 2011. This was first reported by CNBC's Steve Liesman.

The Post story never mentions this fact. A spokesman for the Post didn't immediately return a request for comment as to why.

"We have no reason to believe this isn't an isolated incident," the Census spokesperson told Business Insider. "This was an employee who was willfully disobeying Census procedures and disobeying the law."

...

This source is also responsible for the allegation that a weird-looking jobs report in September 2012 — which conservatives at the time suggested could have been intentionally manipulated — was "faked" to produce a decline in the unemployment rate from 8.1% in August to 7.8% in September.

The Post story also cites confidential documents — but all of the issues cited from the documents are from 2010.

The Census spokesperson said that the Bureau has more than 7,000 field representatives like Buckmon, so it would be close to impossible for one employee to have a significant effect on the overall report.

Others, like Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal, also pointed out issues with the Post's story, like the fact that the September jobs report was very much on trend with the declining unemployment rate.
Content from External Source
Weisanthal's piece does a very good job at looking at the actual figures, and not just some vague "whistleblower" rumors.
http://www.businessinsider.com/report-on-unemployment-rate-being-faked-2013-11
. While it's true that at the time the September Jobs Report looked very weird, in retrospect that drop-off in the unemployment rate looks totally on-trend.
Content from External Source
Does the report factor in the amount of people in the workforce ? Does it factor in if they are making the same salary ? Does it factor in weather or not they are part time ? Its just flawed Data
 
The report uses statistical methods that are mandated by law. They are required to count things a certain way, so the figures are consistent from year to year, and so trends will be visible.
 
Basically the claim is that Obama and or the Democratic party encouraged the census to falsify data to Make unemployment numbers to look better and win re election. I saw coverage of this on the news last night. And although info is limited at this time, I think is worth keeping an eye on because I'm sure there will be more 'info' to this story. From day one there have been CTs that claim Obama stole the 2012 election and this would end up bolstering those claims.
Not taking a side on the issue here, but rigging numbers to win re election would be a serious charge, so I think it's worth looking into.
The NY Post story doesn't lay the blame at the feet of either the Obama Administration or the Democratic Party. While Obama may have benefited from the actions, the blame is being place on bureaucrats padding numbers to meet their quotas and keep their jobs. The blog then takes the story and puts its own spin on it and attempts to sell all the panic oriented products around the article.
 
The report uses statistical methods that are mandated by law. They are required to count things a certain way, so the figures are consistent from year to year, and so trends will be visible.
Sure iv seen it for years and then a week later they come up with revised numbers when no one is paying attention . Like have a front page story then a week later in the middle they print a retraction .
 
There are six main measures of unemployment. U-1 to U-6. The "official" one is U-3, but they are all important to policy making:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm


How they get these figures is explained on this page, which goes into great depth as to how the survey works. @Joe, that should answer your questions.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
Sure I trust the minister of propaganda or the government to tell me the truth ? http://www.people-press.org/2013/10/18/trust-in-government-interactive/ Much like Jay Carney when he was asked about this story he labeled it a conspiracy .
 
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If someone (like, say, Glenn Beck) thought these figures were faked, then they could easily pay someone to do the same survey using the same methodology, and see if there's any statistical difference.

They don't because they know it's going to be the same, and there's more milage to get from rumors than from actually figuring things out.
 
If someone (like, say, Glenn Beck) thought these figures were faked, then they could easily pay someone to do the same survey using the same methodology, and see if there's any statistical difference.

They don't because they know it's going to be the same, and there's more milage to get from rumors than from actually figuring things out.
It depends on who they call and where they call . very easy to manipulate
 
And very easy to check if it is being manipulated. So why does Beck not check?
Because it's easier to yell "the sky is falling" and sell they next wave of survival products than it is to actual do the research to prove the claim.
 
Time will tell as usual on these things. Many subjects that have been posted on the Blaze have eventually been picked up and confirmed by the Mainstream media(Finally), like that of the Benghazi scandal, and others have not.

So, it is a crap shoot. Either they did fudge the numbers or not. At some point we might find out. With this administration, I would not put it past them.

They seem to make the Nixon admin' look like choir boys. History will judge at some point in the future. One thing is for sure. That Hope and Change he spoke of is not exactly what many had hoped for, and to most of us, has been a horrible dream. :)

That is about the extent I think I wish to get into when it comes to my views or opinions on politics. :)
 
And very easy to check if it is being manipulated. So why does Beck not check?
I didnt think it was Beck who exposed it . Darrell Issa wants a investigation but Im sure theyll stall that as well . If it comes out that its true its election fraud becuase our dear leader was using the data to get reelected so he can continue to destroy America
 
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