by Owen Klinsky
Republican lawmakers wrote to Department of Labor (DOL) Acting Secretary Julie Su on Friday, slamming the agency for ignoring an oversight request regarding its “botched release” of data that showed the Biden-Harris administration had wildly overestimated job creation.
The August Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release — which revealed the U.S. economy had created more than 800,000 fewer jobs in the twelve months through March than the administration had claimed — was posted roughly a half hour late, with a slew of Wall Street investment firms obtaining details about the report at least 15 minutes before the public. Republican Reps. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and Bob Good of Virginia issued an oversight request following the incident, which the DOL then failed to respond to, prompting the lawmakers to re-up their inquiry into whether or not the BLS favored Wall Street insiders over the American public, according to the letter obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The Department of Labor (DOL) has once again ignored an oversight request from the Committee on Education and the Workforce as part of its work to hold the federal government to the highest standards of accountability,” the letter states. “DOL’s response to the Committee’s request for information is necessary to ensure that BLS is providing a fair playing field for those relying on its work.”
Foxx and Good issued several requests in the new letter, including demanding the agency provide “any written complaints received by DOL regarding the release of the job numbers on Aug. 21” and re-upping their September request that “all documents, records, and communications, including any email correspondence, in which job numbers were provided to an entity or individual outside BLS in advance of their public release” be shared with the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The BLS provided data on the August revision to some Wall Street analysts who called the agency during the delay, giving firms like BNP Paribas and Mizuho Financial Group access to the data while everyone else was left uninformed. The half-hour delay allowed rumors to proliferate, leading to investors proliferating both accurate and inaccurate information, stoking a trading frenzy.
“Trading volumes spiked around BLS’s delay,” Foxx and Good wrote in their September inquiry into the data release. “At best, BLS’s botched release of the job numbers caused significant uncertainty and confusion and undermined confidence in the data. At worst, BLS’s actions may have provided an unfair advantage to several firms.”
In a separate March incident, a BLS employee shared confidential information on housing inflation with a group of analysts addressed as “super users,” leading to speculation that the agency provides informational advantages to certain Wall Street traders.
“Given BLS’ stated mandate as a neutral fact-finding agency responsible for safeguarding statistical information, it is unacceptable that a BLS employee leaked confidential information with market-moving implications to a select, exclusive group of Wall Street insiders,” Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy wrote in April. “BLS has publicly committed to ‘tak[ing] this opportunity to reinforce [BLS’] customer service standards and training across the Bureau,’ but has not provided any specific details about what it has done or will do to rectify this incident. Restoring public trust in BLS’ mission will take more than mere words.”
The Department of Labor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Owen Klinsky is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
