Report: Obama-Boosting Jobs Figures Faked

The Census Bureau falsified unemployment data to make it appear that more people were working just as President Barack Obama sought a second term in the White House, a new report claimed Tuesday.

The official unemployment rate fell from 8.1 percent in August 2012 to 7.8 percent a month later, something Obama mentioned over and over while touting the success of his economic recovery plan in the final month of the election. The figures represented the biggest one-month gain in more than nine years.

But The New York Post reports that two years earlier, Census had nabbed employee Julius Buckmon making up the data used for the unemployment report. Buckmon — who on paper conducted three times as many household interviews as his colleagues — told the Post that he did so at the directive of his superiors.

And Buckmon was not alone, according to the paper.

"A knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today," Post columnist John Crudele writes.

Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric seemed to realize something was wrong at the time and tweeted that he thought something was wrong.

Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers

— Jack Welch (@jack_welch) October 5, 2012

The story started in 2010, when the website GovernmentExecutive.com reported that the Census Bureau had fired two supervisors in a New York field office after whistleblowers disclosed they were instructed to falsify data.

Census has six regions from which surveys are conducted and the New York and Philadelphia regions had been coming up short on the number of responses to its surveys, according to what Buckmon told the Post. He helped Philadelphia fill the gaps with fake interviews, he said, inventing people and saying they had jobs or filling out surveys for people who didn’t answer their doors or telephones.

His actions, and those of countless other Census employees, would boost the number of
people saying they have jobs.

The Census, a scientific poll, is supposed to interview 60,000 households to determine each month’s jobless number, which is currently 7.3 percent. Each household represents 5,000 U.S. homes.

Census did not publicly disclose the falsification and never informed the U.S. Labor Department that the data was tainted, according to the Post.

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