beach, wm bls
https://littlesis.org/person/274865-William_Beach
Number of documents: 4 :: see all
- Head of federal agency responsible fo...
- Trump Announces Key Additions to his ...
- FEC Filing 20036543150 ken cribb, feulner and mrs
- Mercatus Center bio - William Beach
interlocks many more
Fund for a Free Market America
RelationshipsInterlocksGivingData
Donors
Showing 1-10 of 46 :: see all
Rob Walton Former Chairman of Wal-Mart, current Director
• 1 contribution · 5,000 USD ('01)
Richard J Stephenson CEO, Cancer Centers of America
• 1 contribution · 5,000 USD ('04)
Jack A Abramoff Convicted GOP lobbyist and embezzler
• 1 contribution · 2,500 USD ('00)
Charles R. Black Lobbyist for Prime Policy Group; top Republican adviser to Reagan and Bush I
• 2 contributions · 2,000 USD ('00→'05)
Robert Luddy President & Founder, CaptiveAire Systems
• 1 contribution · 2,000 USD (Sep 28 '00)
Richard A Viguerie Chairman, ConservativeHQ.com
• 2 contributions · 2,000 USD ('00)
John W Rowe Chairman Emeritus - Exelon Corporation
• 1 contribution · 1,000 USD ('00)
Wilbur H Gantz Pathocapital, LLC
• 1 contribution · 1,000 USD (Oct 13 '98)
Robert Henry Michel US Representative from Illinois
• 1 contribution · 1,000 USD (Sep 7 '00)
Stanley S. Hubbard Hubbard Broadcasting billionaire
• 1 contribution · 1,000 USD ('00)
==
https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/trump-job-numbers/
no lnx twt
Head of federal agency responsible for wildly inaccurate jobs numbers is Trump holdover
David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement November 18, 2021
Some areas of the U.S. federal government are sacrosanct.
The CDC doesn't screw around with reporting COVID information, because millions of people, including scientists, make life or death decisions based on those data.
The Labor Dept. doesn't tweak jobs numbers for political purposes, or to make a president look good or bad, because to report inaccurate results leads to tremendous distrust of the government, messes up markets, and plans of major corporations.
And yet under President Donald Trump the Health and Human Services Dept. altered CDC documents – once considered sacrosanct documents – for political purposes, CNN reported last year.
"Amid tension between the administration and the CDC, former Trump campaign official turned chief HHS spokesman Michael Caputo and his team had demanded to see reports out of the CDC before they are released, a senior administration official said. Officials within HHS had defended the demand, saying the CDC fell under the agency's umbrella and that all communications and public documents needed to be cleared at the top."
A federal official told CNN that in addition to reviewing reports, HHS political appointee Paul Alexander has regularly added his input — often interpreted by CDC officials as political in nature — to weekly scientific reports intended to track the ongoing coronavirus pandemic response. The development marks the latest example of political interference by administration appointees at the nation's health agencies.
So when The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the federal government "sharply underestimated job gains for most of 2021, including four months this summer in which it missed more job growth than at any other time on record," some expressed concern.
"In the most recent four months with revisions, June through September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported it underestimated job growth by a cumulative 626,000 jobs — that's the largest underestimate of any other comparable period, going back to 1979. If those revisions were themselves a jobs report, they'd be an absolute blockbuster," the Post noted.
They add, "recent revisions have been big enough to turn a substantial slump into a surprising surge."
Americans, in other words, have been living under the false belief that the labor market wasn't exactly hopping, thanks to wildly inaccurate numbers out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency under the Dept. of Labor that collects, tracks, and analyzes these critical numbers.
Curiously, as the Post also noted, the exact opposite happened last year, when Donald Trump was president.
"Revisions in the already calamitous months of March and April 2020," under Trump, "found the economy had lost 922,000 more jobs than initially reported."
Oops.
Given what we know happened at CDC, you'd think some might be wondering what's going on.
Well, we are.
As it turns out, William Beach – the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that since the start of the pandemic has been churning out wildly inaccurate (but very pro-Trump) numbers – was appointed by Donald Trump, used to work for a very pro-Trump think tank known as the Heritage Foundation, worked for a university research center that is funded by the very pro-Trump Charles Koch (as in the Koch Bros.), and also used to work for the Republicans on the the Senate Budget Committee.
(And while it's unclear when Beach left Heritage, it's important to know that right wing think tank is a purveyor of climate change denialism, fake critical race theory and voter fraud claims, and voter suppression legislation.)
So, who cares if the labor numbers are wrong?
Well, everyone, when they read headlines calling Biden's jobs numbers a "colossal miss," "ugly," "dismal" and "disappointing," as The Post noted. Companies make major decisions based on these numbers, which everyone realizes are just estimates, but up until last year were good indicators of what is going on.
Under Beach, the Biden administration has been slammed, giving Republicans a false tool to attack. And like bad newspaper articles that appear on page one and linger in Americans' minds for days, corrections only appear on the back pages, invisible to the vast majority of people who only remember what was false.
An important side note: the Bureau of Labor Statistics is also responsible for reporting out the Consumer Price Index, which in recent days has claimed massive price increases.
NCRM emailed Commissioner Beach on Wednesday, asking if he intended to resign, and asking him to explain what caused these massive errors and if that has been fixed.
We also asked if he maintains any professional, personal, or financial ties to The Heritage Foundation, Senate Republicans or any of his previous right wing employers.
Commissioner Beach did not respond, but Bureau of Labor Statistics Deputy Commissioner William J. Wiatrowski did – with a boilerplate explanation of revisions, and a statement assuring us that the “integrity of BLS data collection and reporting is paramount. The BLS commissioner, as has always been the case, does not see data until they are finalized. Civil servant economists and statisticians tabulate and analyze the data."
No word on any resignation – or if this massive problem has been fixed.
There's no evidence to say these massive screw ups are intentional – or worse, politically motivated – but the American public and American businesses deserve better, they deserve factual data they can count on, and they deserve to know what's actually happening on their President's watch – any president.
If that cannot happen under this commissioner, it's time for a new one.
wASHINGTON, D.C.—The Heritage Foundation's **Paul Winfree**, director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, and Norbert Michel, director of Center for Data Analysis, released the following statement after the U.S. Senate's confirmation of Bill Beach to be commissioner of labor statistics at the U.S. Department of Labor. Beach previously worked at Heritage as the founding director of the Center for Data Analysis.
Paul Winfree:
“The Senate’s confirmation of Bill Beach as BLS commissioner is just excellent. Bill is an exceptional leader and economist. His commitment to objectivity and transparency is critical for the Bureau. I suspect that Bill will expand data collection while bringing an innovative mindset that will excite economists everywhere.”
Norbert Michel:
“Bill Beach was the long-time (and founding) director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. He is a gifted economist with a long track record of overseeing original statistical research on topics such as labor, Social Security, trade, and tax. Beach has always displayed a staunch commitment to producing high quality quantitative research, making him an ideal candidate to run the BLS.”
li
william Beach
Commissioner of Labor Statistics at the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Washington, District of Columbia, United States500+ connections
:{Bureau of Labor Statistics:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:transparent;outline:0px;display:-webkit-box;max-height:4.8rem;overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2"):}:
:{University of Buckingham:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:transparent;outline:0px;display:-webkit-box;max-height:4.8rem;overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2"):}:Experience
Commissioner of Labor Statistics
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Mar 2019 - Present3 years
Washington D.C. Metro Area
Vice President for Policy Research
Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Feb 2016 - Mar 2019 3 years 2 months
Arlington, VA
Chief Economist (Minority Staff)
Senate Budget Committee
Jan 2013 - Feb 2016 3 years 2 months
Director
The Heritage Foundation
Jan 1998 - Jan 20131 5 years 1 month
Principal
The :{Pew Charitable Trusts:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:
2007 - 2009 2 years
President
Institute for Humane Studies
Nov 1991 - Mar 19953 years 5 months
Senior Economist
Sprint
May 1987 - Nov 19914 years 7 months
Worked at the headquarter of Midwest Group and later at the corporate headquarters of Sprint.
Education
University of Buckingham
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)Economics
2007 - 2014
University of Missouri-Columbia
MAHistory, Economics
1971 - 1978
Washburn University
BAHistory and Economics
1967 - 1971
Groups
Catholic Professionals
-
Institute of International Monetary Research
-
Washburn University Alumni
-
Recommendations received
- ### Tim Kane
“Bill Beach is a great boss, maybe the best I ever had. He is an insightful economist but also a top-notch mentor. A man with good humor always, he treated his team like a family. I hope my staff thinks of me the way I think of Bill.”
- ### Erin Lambert
“Bill Beach served is knowledgable in his work and a good manager of those who work for him. He taught me quite a bit about work and analyzing public data while I worked for him”
4 people have recommended William:{:{People also viewed}::{Patrick Zarek}::{Graduate Student at Vanderbilt University}::{Washington DC-Baltimore Area}::{
}:Joseph Castillo, MBACorrespondence Analyst at U.S. Department of Homeland SecurityArlington, VA:{
}:Natalka Cap RN, BSN, CPTSenior Diabetes Care Sales Representative at Novo NordiskDetroit Metropolitan Area:{
}:Bhavini PatelDietetics Student at Rutgers University-New BrunswickEdison, NJ:{
}:Valerie GabrielExecutive Diabetes Care Specialist at Novo NordiskUtica, MI:{
}:Jena EisenbergMarketing Director at MAKING THE GRADE-HOPE FOR AFRICAN YOUTHWashington, DC:{
}:Kelly JacksonSenior Oncology Account Manager at Seattle GeneticsBelmont, MI:{
}:Dhruman SampatTrial Attorney at the Department of Justice, Civil DivisionWashington DC-Baltimore Area:{
}:Adam ThiererSenior Research Fellow at Mercatus CenterMcLean, VA:{
}:Lily Patterson(she/her/hers) Program Analyst at Bureau of Labor StatisticsWashington, DC:{
}:Holli HodgeDiabetes Care Specialist at Novo NordiskKnoxville, TN:{
}:Sidney PatelPhysician Assistant at Cardiology Care for ChildrenLancaster, PA:{
}:Rosa CreechSr Obesity Care Specialist at Novo NordiskGreater Jackson Area:{
}:Dwight HowseSearching for a jobGreater Saginaw-Midland-Bay City Area:{
}:Vashti Carisa Bryant, Ph.D.DeanSeattle, WA:{
}:Julia PrusTax Legislative Assistant at United States SenateWashington, DC:{
}:Aaron ThompsonSenior Database Administrator at The Heritage FoundationWashington, DC:{
}:Jamie LedgisterJudicial Law ClerkHarrison, NJ:{
}:Shaleen TitleDistinguished Cannabis Policy Practitioner in Residence at Drug Enforcement and Policy Center, Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State UniversityGreater Boston:{
}:Bruce RobertsCity Commissioner/Police Chief (ret.)Fort Lauderdale, FL}:
William W. Beach is Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.[1]
Contents
- :{1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Education:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Career:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{References:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{External links:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
Education
Beach holds a BA degree from Washburn University, a master's degree from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and a PhD in Economics from the University of Buckingham.[1]
Career
Beach was previously Vice President for Policy Research at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, Chief Economist for the Senate Budget Committee, Republican Staff, and Lazof Family Fellow in Economics at The Heritage Foundation and director of the Foundation's Center for Data Analysis.[2]
Selected Works
- Beach, William W., and Tim Kane. "Methodology: Measuring the 10 economic freedoms." 2008 Index of economic freedom (2008): 39–55.
- Beach, William W., and Marc A. Miles. "Explaining the factors of the index of economic freedom." 2006 Index of Economic Freedom (2006): 55–76.
- Beach, William W., and Gareth G. Davis. Social Security's rate of return. Heritage Foundation, 1998.
- Beach, William W., Aaron B. Schavey, and Isabel M. Isidro. How Realiable are IMF Economic Forecasts?. Heritage Foundation, 1999.
- Butler, Stuart M., William W. Beach, and Paul L. Winfree. Pathways to economic mobility: Key indicators. Economic mobility project, 2008.
References
- ^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Beach_%28economist%29#cite_ref-BLS_1-1) "William W. Beach, Commissioner". www.bls.gov.
- ^ "White House to Nominate Beach to BLS". Mercatus Center. 2017-10-24. Retrieved 2019-04-25.
External links
Authority control  |
- 21st-century American economists
- Bureau of Labor Statistics
- United States Department of Labor officials
- Trump administration personnel
- American civil servants
- Washburn University alumni
- Alumni of the University of Buckingham
- University of Missouri alumni
- Living people
- ===
wapo
The government dramatically underestimated job growth this summer
Initial reports underestimated job growth by a cumulative 626,000 over four months
By Andrew Van Dam
Staff writer
November 16, 2021
The government sharply underestimated job gains for most of 2021, including four months this summer in which it missed more job growth than at any other time on record.
In the most recent four months with revisions, June through September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported it underestimated job growth by a cumulative 626,000 jobs — that’s the largest underestimate of any other comparable period, going back to 1979. If those revisions were themselves a jobs report, they’d be an absolute blockbuster.
In an average month before the pandemic, estimates would be revised by a little over 30,000 jobs, or just 0.02 percent of all the jobs in the United States. The recent revisions to the jobs reports have been much larger.
The missing jobs surfaced through revisions to the widely watched non-farm payrolls number that BLS releases each month. The data is considered preliminary until it has been revised twice. The fixes are typically minor, but recent revisions have been big enough to turn a substantial slump into a surprising surge.
These waves of revisions in the same direction tend to happen at turning points in the labor market. BLS relies on highly technical models to adjust for seasonal patterns, business closures and other factors, to catch new trends in the labor market and make revisions quickly.
It’s happened before during this pandemic. Revisions in the already calamitous months of March and April 2020 found the economy had lost 922,000 more jobs than initially reported. Also, earlier in the pandemic, BLS drew criticism for a misclassification error in a different survey, which BLS economists said greatly understated the unemployment rate. Due to the way certain survey questions were interpreted, millions of workers who said they had a job but couldn’t work due to coronavirus shutdowns were marked as absent rather than as temporarily unemployed.
A ‘misclassification error’ made the May unemployment rate look better than it is. Here’s what happened.
This time, the payrolls data has been obfuscated as businesses have been slow to respond to government surveys amid the chaos of the pandemic — part of a larger pattern in which the deadly virus has wreaked havoc on federal statistics.
Angie Clinton, the BLS section chief who oversees the payroll number crunching, said there have been more large revisions since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but that revisions are a sign of the system working as intended.
“We’re just improving the estimate using everything we know up through the month we’re releasing, really,” Clinton said. “I mean, it sounds counterintuitive to most people because revisions — they think, ‘Oh, they got it wrong the first time.’ But no, we got it right, based on what the sample told us. But going forward we receive more sample, some corrected records, and recalculate seasonal factors, which together may indicate a different story.”
The revisions have recast the narrative of a summer slowdown. In August, when economists expected a strong follow-up to the 943,000 jobs the economy added in July, the BLS announced the U.S. added only 235,000 jobs. Headlines dubbed it a “colossal miss” as job growth took a “giant step back.” Two months later, revisions based on additional data showed August jobs grew by 483,000, more than double the anemic original reading. It was the biggest positive revision in almost four decades.
When it was reported the economy added just 194,000 jobs in September, headlines called it “ugly,” “dismal” and “disappointing.” A month later, a revision showed the economy had actually added 312,000 jobs in September.
After the revisions, disappointing months like August looked a lot more like October, a month that was hailed as a labor market rebound. In hindsight, while a blockbuster June and July were even better than they looked, they didn’t lead to months of stagnation — they diminished somewhat, but still produced solid, steady growth that continued through October.
President Biden may have even paid a political price for the lackluster jobs numbers. From April to June, polls found that most Americans (51 percent) approved of Biden’s handling of the economy, according to an average of polls from Fox, NBC, Quinnipiac and The Post. But as bad economic numbers came out and the national political climate turned south, those numbers fell steadily — in October, just 39 percent approved of Biden’s handling of the economy, while 57 percent disapproved.
“Naysayers and detractors from Biden’s agenda are going to exploit any ‘bad’ economic indicator they can as evidence for why Biden has it wrong on the economy or why Biden’s Build Back Better proposal gets it wrong on the economy, and in that sense underestimates of the jobs numbers are not helpful,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the left-leaning Groundwork Collaborative.
However, Biden’s falling economic-approval numbers during that period could also be attributed to other issues, such as rising inflationand the controversial and abrupt Afghanistan withdrawal, which have dragged Biden’s approval down across the board, Owens said. In that environment, a few slow jobs reports may not been the primary driver of public opinion, Owens said.
Each month’s revisions simply reflect economists’ new best estimate, based on additional data. For example, when businesses report a surprisingly good month, such as this October, the seasonal adjustment algorithms look back on previous months with the benefit of hindsight. A good October likely didn’t come out of nowhere: the August and September estimates probably missed some growth. So, some of the jump in October is assumed to have occurred earlier, and a portion of the October gains are reallocated back to previous months.
These best-guess first estimates are often refined as responses straggle in from more of the 697,000 establishments surveyed each month, including major employers, government agencies and a rotating cast of small businesses. The businesses are asked how many people they employ, how much those people are paid excluding bonuses, and how many hours those are paid for.
In a typical recent month, about a quarter of the responses have come in late. When businesses don’t respond, economists and their models must account for all the reasons a business might not return a survey, including the possibility that it may have suddenly closed up shop. They must also account for newly formed businesses that won’t be on their survey rolls quite yet.
Jane Oates, the president of the employment-focused nonprofit WorkingNation and a Labor Department official in the aftermath of the Great Recession, said the coronavirus crisis and subsequent worker shortage put many employers under amazing stress. One plausible explanation for the Labor Department’s chronic underestimates is that the employers who were hiring the most were too busy to respond to the survey, so initial responses missed the fastest-hiring firms.
“Back in the Great Recession, there were many employers who were impacted but now every employer is impacted. Everybody is scrambling for talent. And I bet there’s just a higher percentage of them missing the deadline,” Oates said.
Before the pandemic, about 60 percent of contacted businesses responded to the survey, BLS data show. By May 2021, the most recent month for which data is available, that had declined to 49 percent. Those low response rates may have played a role in the unusually high revisions seen during the past two years.
Rather than showing that BLS has failed, the revisions are a tribute to the agency’s commitment to getting the numbers right, said Cornell University economist Erica Groshen, who served as BLS commissioner from 2013 to 2017.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded to questions on Nov. 12 about the record 4.4 million Americans who quit their jobs in September. (The Washington Post)
“They take their responsibilities very seriously,” Groshen said. “They’re very transparent about their methodology and they’re always trying to improve that.”
BLS is a professional civil-service agency. The only political appointee, the commissioner, has no access to numbers before they are finalized. The economists and statisticians entrusted with the jobs numbers work with almost fanatic secrecy, Groshen said.
When staffers worked in the offices, before the pandemic, security was so tight that, if window washers appeared outside their windows, staff would get up and close the blinds. Staff had to empty their own trash from their locked-down offices — outside workers, even cleaners, aren’t allowed to enter the inner sanctum of statistics.
Scott Clement contributed to this report.