Another Census Office Accused of Faking Unemployment Numbers

In Nov. 2013 the NY Post provided evidence the pre-2012 election unemployment numbers may have been rigged to help Obama win reelection. In a follow up story three month months later the Post reported that whistle-blower claims to have warned the Labor department of unemployment manipulation in the Philadelphia office as far back as November 2011.

When the jobs report came out the first week of October 2012 reporting a drop from 8.1% to 7.8%, many people including former GE chief Jack Welch believed the numbers were manipulated. The Post report of November 2013 contended the surprising .3% drop was based on manipulated numbers, and people within the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, were well aware of the manipulation.

According a whistle blower in the Denver office of the Census Bureau that manipulation is still going on.

A field supervisor in the Census Bureau’s Denver region has informed her organization’s higher-ups, the head of the Commerce Department and congressional investigators that she believes economic data collected by her office is being falsified.

And this whistleblower — who asked that I not identify her — said her bosses in Denver ignored her warnings even after she provided details of wrongdoing by three different survey takers.

The three continued to collect data even after she reported them.

When I spoke with this whistleblower earlier this year as part of my investigation of Census, she told me that hundreds of interviews that go into the Labor Department’s unemployment rate and inflation surveys would miraculously be completed just hours before deadline.

The implication was that someone with the ability to fill in the blanks on incomplete surveys was doing just that.

The Denver whistleblower also provided to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform the names of other Census workers who can spill the beans about data fraud in other regions.

Census is broken up into six regions. The Denver office covers Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Wyoming

The Oversight Committee recently completed a report along with the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that verified one case of falsification in the Philly office. But the committee said it couldn’t prove or disprove that there was a nationwide pattern of data fraud because [The Dept. of] Commerce — which oversees Census — had “obstructed” its investigation.

“There are serious issues within the Census Bureau Denver regional office management and I feel it’s time that you are made aware of them,” the whistleblower wrote on Sept. 30 to Penny Pritzker, the head of Commerce, and Wayne Hatcher, associate director of Census Field operations.

That same information, along with about a thousand e-mails and other documents, was also sent to the Oversight Committee.

The case of falsified data in Philly — by a surveyor named Julius Buckmon — resulted in a lengthy investigation by Commerce’s Inspector General as well as the probe by the Oversight Committee and the Joint Economic Committee.

‘When the question is asked about data quality, my answer would be simple, there is none. I wouldn’t trust any data from the Census Bureau.’ - Denver whistleblower

Unemployment numbers are part of the basic reporting the federal government conducts for the American people.  It looks as the "most transparent administration in history" is giving the people fake info.