Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

I can’t believe we have to debate some things, but with Trump you never know how ridiculous the discussion can get. The Washington Post tells us that the Trump administration is boasting about the huge surge in native-born Americans who are now working thanks to his policy of beating up on immigrants. The boast tells us more about their ignorance of government data than the success of their policy.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) monthly household survey, from which it gets employment and unemployment rates, has population controls put in place in January of each year. These controls are derived from Census data on the size of the population over age 16. The number rises each month based on projected growth in this population due to 15-year-olds turning 16, minus the projected number of deaths in people already over age 16. This growth is cooked in the data in January.

When BLS calculates the native-born population each month, it uses its survey to estimate the immigrant population. The native-born population is the difference between its population estimates and the number of immigrants it finds in its survey.

Since the total size of the population is fixed by the population controls, the size of the native-born population in these estimates will automatically increase if fewer immigrants answer the survey. That is what we are finding in 2025.

We have a sharp decline in immigrants answering the survey. That could be in part because some have left. It is also in part because immigrants might be scared of answering a government survey. It may also be the case that they just identify themselves as immigrants in the survey.

The reason for the decline doesn’t matter for these purposes. The point is simply that finding fewer immigrants in the survey by definition means BLS will report more native-born people in the population.

The number of native-born people over age 16 has reportedly increased by 4.5 million since December of 2024. Does anyone have a story of how we suddenly get this huge jump in the number of people over age 16? Did older people stop dying this year or did 15-year-olds turn 16 at a faster than usual pace? It would have to be one or the other. I guess we should ask the White House.

Anyhow, the employment data are based on this population count. BLS uses its survey to calculate the employment rate for native-born people and then multiples it by the population count. That ratio was 59.1 percent in July, the exact same ratio as it was in December, but because the population count has soared it implies an increase in employment of the native-born of 2.5 million.

If anyone is familiar with how these numbers are calculated they would know that boasting about this 2.5 million increase in employment is a joke. But apparently, Trump’s White House is clueless about the data and people who do know it are too scared to tell their bosses.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

The post Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest: Native Born Employment is Not Surging appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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