Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Friday apologized for suggesting the Trump administration might have meddled with the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May uplifting jobs and unemployment report.
The unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to 13.3% in May, down from April’s dizzying rate of 14.7%, indicating the nation's economy is coming back faster than expected from the coronavirus lockdown.
And the report showed the economy added a surprising 2.5 million jobs last month, suggesting the employment collapse most likely bottomed out in April, when the rate reached 14.7%.
Krugman, however, was skeptical.
“This being the Trump era, you can’t completely discount the possibility that they’ve gotten to the BLS, but it’s much more likely the the models used to produce these number — they aren't really raw data — have gone haywire in a time of pandemic,” he tweeted.
The conspiracy theory trial ballon crashed — earning a scolding even from a former BLS commissioner. The blowback also came from writer Chris Arnade, who called Krugman’s theory “embarrassing,” and lawyer James Hasson who blasted it as “incredible.”
Krugman relented.
“Getting a lot of outraged pushback over even allowing the possibility of something amiss at BLS. I was just covering myself, because so many weird things have happened lately. But I apologize for any suggestion that a highly professional agency might have been corrupted,” he later tweeted.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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