Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Trump Finds Cooking in the Unemployment Numbers

Actually, the government reports the economic data the presumptive Republican nominee thinks is being withheld.

June 3, 2016 at 4:28 PM UTC

Barry Ritholtz is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

Not how the government derives economic data.
Photographer: Juan Mabromata/afp/getty images

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By now, we have become almost used to a steady stream of inaccurate statements from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Most are not worth correcting. However, Donald Trump's recent comments on the federal government's unemployment data, so reminiscent of those made a few years ago by former General Electric chief Jack Welch, deserve a rejoinder. (He called today's report that employers added just 38,000 jobs "terrible" -- but only if you ignore the 35,000 striking Verizon workers. Still, 73,000 new jobs is pretty meh.)

The New York Post’s John Crudele last week interviewed Trump, who said he thinks the jobless rate is close to 20 percent and not the roughly 5 percent reported by the Labor Department. And, of course, Crudele reported, anyone who buys the 5 percent figure is a “dummy,” according to Trump.