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BLS Denies Rumors of Payrolls Data Errors

It is not too unusual for rumors to circulate that certain components of economic data contained errors or were just wrong in an instance where the actual number is so far off from expectations.  This morning there was a rumor…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published June 5, 2009, 10:08am ET · 1 min read

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It is not too unusual for rumors to circulate that certain components of economic data contained errors or were just wrong in an instance where the actual number is so far off from expectations.  This morning there was a rumor that the jobs data on the non-farm payrolls had an error.  The market was expecting a reading of -525,000 or -530,00.  We had penned down an unofficial whisper number of -500,000.  The grossly different -345,000 started the rumor mill as this was far less than any of the economists surveyed.  A reading of 9.4% in unemployment rather then the expected 9.2% also led to many people scratching their heads.

Our call into the Bureau of Labor Statistics was answered with a denial of any errors in the jobs data.  The BLS press officer, Gary Steinberg, said the rumor of any errors was a false and said specifically, “We have no plans to revise any of the data released this morning.”

More likely than this being a real rumor, it was likely speculation because the data was so much different than expectations.

Jon C. Ogg
June 6, 2009

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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