Joshua Mask

The Friends of #BLS protest the firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.

The rationale for firing her is without merit and undermines the credibility of federal economic statistics that are a cornerstone of intelligent economic decision-making by businesses, families, and policymakers.

The Fed can’t do its job with politicized data.

“To borrow from the soft-landing analogy, having a flawed instrument panel can be just as dangerous as having an obediently partisan pilot.”

August 1, 2025 AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION Committee on Economic Statistics and Committee on Government Relations Statement from the American Economic Association on the Dismissal of the BLS Commissioner Leaders of the American Economic Association express their grave concern over the dismissal of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) earlier today. The independence of the federal statistical agencies is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. Accurate, timely, and impartial statistics are the foundation upon which households, businesses, and policymakers make critical decisions. Undermining the independence or credibility of these agencies threatens the integrity of the information that markets, institutions, and the public rely on every day. Measuring the vast and dynamic U.S. economy in real time is inherently challenging. It is standard practice for statistical estimates to be revised as more complete and higher-quality data become available. These revisions reflect the commitment of statistical agencies to accuracy, transparency, and methodological rigor-not failure or bias. The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity. Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions. We call upon elected officials to respect and preserve the independence of the nation's statistical infrastructure. Lawrence Katz President, American Economic Association Katharine Abraham President-Elect, American Economic Association Karen Dynan Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics Kenneth Troske Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Government Relations

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing

As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements

This is a big deal

Just instructed Perplexity Comet to manually take over my browser and update all the dates for the upcoming semester. It worked really well. Agentic browsers are quite useful.

The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) strongly condemns the baseless removal of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer and the unfounded accusations leveled against the work of the agency. This unprecedented attack on the U.S. statistical system threatens the long-standing credibility of our economic data infrastructure.

NABE strongly condemns the baseless
removal of BLS Commissioner McEntarfer & the unfounded accusations leveled against the work of the agency. This unprecedented attack on the US statistical system threatens the long-standing credibility of our data

files.constantcontact.com/668faa28001/...

What to make of POTUS's attempt to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)?

Let's run down what knowledgable people are saying...

For six months, I've said that threats to economic data have been more collateral damage than intentional harm.

No longer.

Firing the head of the BLS is five-alarm intentional harm to the integrity of US economic data and the entire statistical system.

I can't stress how damaging this is.

Destroys trust in core government statistics.

Like Heidi points out, Trump's policies are rapidly shrinking the immigrant population, but the observed data may understate the decline

The actual Jan-July immigrant population drop could be 2.6 million (5.1%)

This is because survey benchmarks were set before Trump’s actions kicked into high gear

Last thing. BLS does amazing work to create timely, accurate info about America's working families, a huge public good.

They are there for us & we need to show up for them.

If you are a labor economist or care about workers & employment, follow & join Friends of BLS.
www.friendsofbls.org/join

Microsoft study identifies 40 jobs AI chatbots are likely to help automate — and those where the tech is barely being used Microsoft researchers found that translators had much overlap with AI chatbots, while dredge operators had among the least.

www.businessinsider.com/ai-jobs-over...

How Trump’s ‘Least Bad Outcome’ Trade Agreements Could Hurt Everyone A prevailing narrative has emerged about recent U.S. trade agreements: other countries...

I spoke with Talking Points Memo earlier this week about the long-term impact of tariffs enacted by the Trump administration.

talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-e...

😬

The Bull Market for Economists Is Over. It’s an Ominous Sign for the Economy.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/b...

The more you work with LLMs the more obvious it is that someone saying “it’s replacing junior consultants and lawyers!” either doesn’t know what these jobs entail or doesn’t touch LLMs

ABSTRACT IZA DP No. 18001 JULY 2025 Can Better Information Reduce College Gender Gaps? The Impact of Relative Grade Signals on Academic Outcomes for Students in Introductory Economics* This paper considers the impacts of grades and information on gender gaps in college major and college dropout rates at a large public flagship university. Observational and experimental results suggest women are more responsive to introductory economics grades when deciding whether to major in economics while men are more responsive to introductory economics grades when deciding whether to drop out of college. Providing better information about grade distributions appears to only somewhat mitigate these impacts. These results suggest better information may blunt the impact of relative grade sensitivities on college gender gaps but may not fully outweigh the saliency of grades. Finally, we consider the extent to which aligning economics grading standards with those of competing disciplines would reduce the gender gap in economics graduates but find relatively limited impacts.

"Can Better Information Reduce College Gender Gaps? The Impact of Relative Grade Signals on Academic Outcomes for
Students in Introductory Economics" by @franciscaantman.bsky.social, Evelyn Skoy, and Nicholas E. Flores docs.iza.org/dp18001.pdf #EconSky #TeachEcon

A new AI coding challenge just published its first results — and they aren’t pretty | TechCrunch A new AI coding challenge has revealed its first winner — and set a new bar for AI-powered software engineers.

techcrunch.com/2025/07/23/a...

www.nber.org/papers/w34058

Tariffs *have* shown up in the data (just not at total CPI level) #econsky
econbrowser.com/archives/202...

In case you missed it, @wsj.com dropped a bombshell this week.

I’m speaking, of course, about the recent feature on our working paper about credit access:

www.wsj.com/economy/cred...

doi.org/10.1093/jeea...

Cool dataset of cases where generative AI produced fake citations in court filings. 212 examples so far.

www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinatio...

This. This is the tweet.

Next up on summer reading…

Anthropic Economic Futures A multidisciplinary program funding research grants, policy development, and data infrastructure to help society understand and navigate AI's economic transformation.

Proud to support @anthropic.com’s new Economic Futures Program as a member of their Economic Advisory Council!
• Research grants up to $50,000 (rolling basis)
• Policy proposal competition
• Expanded Economic Index data access
Apply: www.anthropic.com/economic-futures
#AI #EconSky

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