The BLS Can’t Be Replaced by the Private Sector
Government statistical agencies provide breadth and context that private firms can’t match.
The data is sound.
Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
Wall Street may be worried about President Donald Trump politicizing government economic statistics, but not everyone agrees he was wrong to fire the BLS commissioner. “I probably would have fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics too,” the billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio wrote on X. He did not accuse her of rigging the jobs numbers to make Republicans look bad, as Trump did, but Dalio called the BLS process “obviously obsolete and error-prone.” The private sector, he said, could do the job better.
No, and no. The BLS is constantly modernizing its methods, and private companies cannot replace the BLS or any other US statistical agency.