Many so-called experts predicted that President Donald Trump’s economic agenda would usher in an inflationary Armageddon. This projection was so often repeated in the media that many Americans, especially Democrats, believed a depression was imminent.
These data problems pertain not only to jobs numbers but also to output data because the collection and reporting of gross domestic product (GDP) skews up because of government spending. Current debt-to-GDP ratios compare with World War II, so we can reasonably assume that much of the mild growth we’ve seen over several years is likely negative.
“It is very similar to the onset of the great Recession, when the BLS was struggling to keep up with rapidly deteriorating economic conditions. Assumptions built into models no longer represented reality, although they may have just a year or two prior. ”
The U.S. economy created 818,000 fewer jobs—or 30 percent—than the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported from April 2023 to March 2024, representing the largest downward revision to payrolls since the global financial crisis.
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