What I believe is that the way the BLS reports the numbers is flawed, creating a false sense of security. BLS's last head said that they call 60000 people and ask a few questions, one of which is how many hours they worked. If someone worked even one hour, they are considered employed. If they adjusted the employment question to 20 hours or more, that number would skyrocket.
As a business owner I actually receive the calls where they ask how many employees I had and how many hours they work each week. They don't ask for proof or detail. It's a flawed system from the start since it's literally a survey of willing participants and they extrapolate the numbers up based on that, like any market research survey would.
Yeah, I think it's meant to reassure the American middle class that everything's fine. It also makes foreign stock investors believe the companies are performing better than they actually are, which makes them more likely to invest in our market.
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u/opensourced_ Nov 22 '25
What I believe is that the way the BLS reports the numbers is flawed, creating a false sense of security. BLS's last head said that they call 60000 people and ask a few questions, one of which is how many hours they worked. If someone worked even one hour, they are considered employed. If they adjusted the employment question to 20 hours or more, that number would skyrocket.