CNBC’s Liesman on Jobs Report Revisions: ‘Conspiracy’ & ‘Total Bunk’ that Gov’t Tried to Make Economy Look Better in an Election Year

KERNEN: “Thanks, Rick. Stay with us. I’m going to ask Steve — I was reading it yesterday, Steve. Once again, you know, these revisions happen, obviously, every year. But this was the biggest once since 2009. And when I was reading it, it said it was because the pandemic once again skewed some figures that there were births, but they didn’t take into account the deaths from the pandemic? Therefore, there was some business formation that didn’t happen? Did you read all that, Steve?”
LIESMAN: “I did, Joe. But I don’t think it’s — I don’t think it’s endemic to the pandemic, so to speak.”
KERNEN: “What was it? Well, hopefully it wasn’t — hopefully it wasn’t trying to gild the lily and make the economy look better during an election year. I’m trying to work for you here.”
LIESMAN: “That conspiracy stuff, Joe, is total bunk. You know that. But here’s the thing. All right, the birth/death model, which is something that tries to estimate what’s going on in the economy with the birth of companies or the death of companies, it can be wrong at turning points in the economy. But I want to explain, Joe, why I thought — why I said I wasn’t sure how much signal to take from this. The reason is because, as you said, this was the biggest revision since 2009. So I went back to look at 2009. If you take a look at what was happening with jobless claims, for example, they were already, by the time that big revision came out, up near 600,000. The insured unemployment rate was already 5%. It’s 1.2% now. Four-week moving average on jobless claims now is 235,000, unchanged from a year ago. My point, Joe, is that at the time that that big revision came out, we were in the middle — we already had a declared recession, GDP was negative. There were a whole suite of confirming economic data points about weakness in the economy. That just does not exist now. I think Rick makes some good points about whether the Fed might have been easier now, better to get the data right. There are issues about seasonalities, he’s 100% right about that. I would just say that I’m not sure how much signal to take from this, which is why today’s jobless claims were very reassuring.”