Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Wednesday that she did not believe the major revision to official jobs numbers because she had only heard about them from Donald Trump.
“I am curious as to your thoughts on today the Bureau of Labor saying that more than 800,000 fewer jobs were actually created than initially reported,” ABC News correspondent Kayna Whitworth said.
Whitworth then played a video of Trump discussing the data.
“No. When I hear that, first of all, I don’t believe it because I’ve never heard Donald Trump say anything truthful,” Raimondo replied.
The figure cited by Whitworth, however, came from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. On Wednesday, the bureau said that there were likely 818,000 fewer jobs created in the 12 months through March than had been reported based on government surveys.
The new figures reflect tax records that are considered more accurate measures of the labor market than the surveys of businesses that are used to calculate the monthly jobs reports.
The release of the revised employment estimates were highly anticipated by Wall Street, investors, and economists. They had been the focus of several analyst reports and stories in the business media over the past week.
The downward revision of 818,000 was major news. It was the largest revision since 2009 and indicated a labor market that was far less robust than it appeared to be according to the monthly figures.
Raimondo, however, appears to have been unaware of the release, a strange ignorance for someone in her position as one of the top economic officials in the U.S.
“It is from the Bureau of Labor,” Whitworth explained.
“I’m not familiar with that,” Raimondo said.