An Unresponsive Public Is Undermining Government Economic Data (msn.com)
- Reference: 0179279950
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/09/16/0619228/an-unresponsive-public-is-undermining-government-economic-data
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/an-unresponsive-public-is-undermining-government-economic-data/ar-AA1Mzhr2
> Anyone who surveys the public, from marketers to pollsters, struggles nowadays to get people to answer their questions. That phenomenon afflicts crucial government data, making it harder for policymakers and investors [1]to know the true state of the economy . Falling survey participation is an important reason the flagship jobs report released every month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the Labor Department, has undergone such big revisions recently.
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> This has rippled into the political sphere. On Aug. 1, President Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a particularly large downward revision to jobs for May and June that owed partly to late responses from survey participants. The White House and top administration officials increased their attacks on the BLS last week after the agency published an annual revision suggesting the U.S. [2]added 911,000 fewer jobs over the 12 months through March. The BLS blamed the initial overestimate partly on response rates.
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> [...] One hypothesis is known as survey fatigue: People are being asked to answer too many questionnaires. Jonathan Eggleston, a senior economist at the U.S. Census Bureau, found in a 2024 study that recent participants in that agency's monthly and annual surveys, which are voluntary, were less likely to answer the 2020 census by mail, phone or online, without a knock on the door. Another is the rise of cellphones with caller ID. In the days of landlines, people had to pick up the phone to know who was calling. These days, many decline to answer callers they don't recognize.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/an-unresponsive-public-is-undermining-government-economic-data/ar-AA1Mzhr2
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/09/1513203/us-created-911000-fewer-jobs-than-previously-thought-in-the-12-months-through-march
I never answer them... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean if they're calling by phone, they won't get me...I do not answer any phone calls I do not recognize (ie on my contacts list).
I figure if it is important enough, they'll leave me a voicemail.
And even if they get through, with phone or email, I don't answer questions to unsolicited contacts from people, as that I have NO idea who they really are or what they want.
I assume most every call or email is a scam unless they prove otherwise.
I kinda figured anyone today with much common sense or even slight sense of privacy and personal security pretty much did the same.
I've instructed my aging parents to do the same thing....too many old people getting swindled.
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I'm with you here.
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Not really. It's just that nowadays it's because super easy and super cheap for them to send out surveys. It seems like every interaction I have with a business these days is quickly followed up by a survey. I don't really have time for that. In the interests of fairness, I ignore them all.
It's also an easy way for them to try to obtain data on you that they may not otherwise have been able to get. And it's a way to impose performance metrics on their workers, so managers like them because it makes th
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Sometimes they're so aggressive that I couldn't reply if I wanted to. "Are you satisfied with the product?" when the delivery tracking shows that it's not even in-country yet.
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I'll respond, now and then, but if they say, "We need 5 minutes of your time!" then nope. If it's like 3 or 4 questions, that's not onerous.
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Yeah also I ignore surveys out of spite or fill them out with garbage.
I know how most of them are used and am automatically biased against any NPS product and dislike the class of people who use the data.
It's very common for me to punish any manager who believes in such crap with zeros all around except for the service of whatever stressed out minimum wage goober who was forced to deal with me. 5/5 or 10/10 always even if the service was in fact shit.
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Yeah but we're savvy and only middle aged.
For our whole adult lives there were people who would answer these surveys but now many of them have died or eventually changed their old habits.
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Fully agree.
Pollsters generally are finding people are growing unresponsive to polling generally. Their task relies on the largesse of people's voluntary participation and that's been badly damaged by:
- fatigue: ain't nobody got time for that shit anyway.
- robocalls: nobody, I mean nobody, is going to wait to hear if it's a "real" survey or some marketing bullshit
- political everything: elections now never seem to end
- deliberate skew to polls: I don't know about you, but the last handful of times I bothe
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Yep if I bother to give any response it's the poison the data of whatever MBA shitbrain thinks I'm gonna work for free or snitch on some overworked phone jocky.
The interesting thing is that according to the responses in this thread, it's somewhat normal.
It'll be interesting to see how long it takes for the business community to adapt to, or even accept, this reality. I'll betcha a lot of best practice humping giants go dick-first into the dirt before anyone dare murmur that their ambitious NPS rollout was
AI Voice Scraper (Score:2)
And now a new worry. If they can get us to talk for just a few seconds, they can feed the recording to AI. Now they can make any message they want, sounding just like us.
Unreliable data (Score:3)
Anything that relies on voluntary responses to surveys is going to be unreliable, as it's going to skew towards the kind of people who respond to such surveys.
Most people don't want to waste their time with such things, especially if there's no reward for doing so. A lot of people will also be suspicious and suspect phishing or some other kind of malicious behaviour. They need to find a more reliable way to get information.
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> as it's going to skew towards the kind of people who respond to such surveys.
As we can see even in the summary, the kind of people who respond depend heavily on their current situation. In this case, it was late responses that were mentioned but we can be sure that many more were no response at all.
People can't spare the time because they're struggling and response rates are a metric that is hard to interpret.
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There are different kinds of surveys. Established government survey programs in general, and the US Current Employment Statistics survey specifically, aren't usually just a random phone call. The CES is something a business agrees to do once a month for a period of time. For small businesses that seems to be about 3 years, and for large ones it's more indefinite.
It is voluntary, but the alternative is to make it compulsory. The montly CES is voluntary but quarterly reporting is not. Censuses and some census
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Its not that there is no reward for this.. (and anyone that responds based on some "reward" is definately going to skew data in a particularly dangerous way..
But what certainly is a concern and why people stop responding is the rise of data theft.. the rise of scams, the rise of people using legititamte concerns for nefarious reasons that has turned people off from responding to such inquiries.. As people become aware that ALL data CAN be used for harm, they are growing increasingly cautious with unsolicit
Meh (Score:3)
Everyone who makes actual economic decisions based on this kind of data have long-ago abandoned confidence in government reporting. It's politicized and it's been systematically sweetened to preserve the illusion of low inflation and higher employment for decades. The fact that people don't want to answer questions may have as much to do with distrust of government as anything else. Why waste your time?
Consider the counterfactual. If it was the Swedish government from the 1990s asking you to answer questions, you'd probably take it seriously because it would credibly inform responsive policy.
BLS stats are mostly just headline generators for the propaganda machine.
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> Everyone who makes actual economic decisions based on this kind of data have long-ago abandoned confidence in government reporting. It's politicized and it's been systematically sweetened to preserve the illusion of low inflation and higher employment for decades.
Extraordinary claims... Seemingly the data influences the financial markets?
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Free: look to ADP, Indeed, LinkedIn and similar sources. Wall Street gets data out of the largest employers regularly because they have special relationships.
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Where do they get their "non-politicized" economic data from then?
Why aren't they using ML on consumer data . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
like everyone else?
I'm being serious here. It's one place machine learning can really make a difference: digesting large swaths of data to find important patterns. I assume JSOC and Mossad are doing this already, they're just providing the results to private enterprise and other para-state operational agencies instead of any of the agencies whose mission is to make life better for most people.
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> digesting large swaths of data
They have to collect the data first.
> I assume JSOC and Mossad are doing this already
As well as the [1]MSS. [wikipedia.org]
But cold-calling, posing as a survey? JSOC can get all the info they want, nearly live, through all of the NSA hooks into our coms and banking systems. Mossad prefers HUMINT* with high value targets. That's probably China on the phone..
*No. That's not a "hot-blooded" Italian lady chasing me. I can spot Ashkenzim when I see them. Even if they get Early History deleted.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_State_Security_(China)
Survey Fatigue (Score:4, Insightful)
> One hypothesis is known as survey fatigue
I'd put my money on this hypothesis. It's become too easy to add a "how are we doing" follow-up to even the tiniest transaction. It costs next to nothing. All I want is an ice cream cone, I don't really care to take the time to evaluate it. My immediate reaction to surveys is to skip them. My local co-op grocery store recently got me to answer a survey by offering a $5 store credit. Maybe offering some sort of compensation for responding is part of the answer?
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Sometimes I've wanted to help a small business with a product I really liked when I get a survey link, but once it is the fifth time the same question was asked a different way to be sure I really meant what I answered the first four times I close the window.
This cannot be new. (Score:2)
My policy has always been never to answer questions of pollsters. Almost everyone I know has felt this way for a long time too.
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When I was a Lad I decided that my time and my opinion have value and, unless the survey is going to compensate me, I'm not wasting my time. A few years later I received a work-related survey in the mail that included a crisp new dollar note. My hubris compelled me to fill out that survey, on company time or course.
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Smart lad, smart man!
Spoiling the barrel. (Score:2)
So basically all the others that have poisoned the well are making legitimate purposes harder? But anyway the BLS is suppose to be surveying businesses. Not the joe on the street. Procrastination is hurting there.
Is it a good use of time? (Score:1)
Of course, with the politicization of everything, one assumes that your response, whatever it is, will be folded and moulded to fit into the predetermined narrative. Which is to say--it's a waste of time.
Well yeah (Score:2)
It used to be impolite to not answer the phone, but since around 2005 or so the majority of phone calls have been scam, so it's no longer impolite. Say, did you know iPhone has a feature that makes it not ring if the number isn't in your contacts? System, "silence unknown callers". Email even more so.
Actual surveys are the same way. As a software developer I get asked to fill out surveys multiple times a day, so I generally don't. Every now and then I try but most of them are disguised marketing campaigns
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If merely quoting Charlie Kirk gets you in trouble then perhaps Charlie Kirk was not a good person.
Parallels with a thread from May on the UK (Score:2)
[1]This one [slashdot.org] in fact, saying that survey response rates for official UK data had collapsed from 35% to 5%.
Survey fatigue is one, but I think people are also more wary about having their opinions attached to data these days. At least for formal, official data anyway, obviously social media is still going strong. I think a factor is that people aren't sure how it's going to be used and if it could come back to them in some way.
[1] https://slashdot.org/story/25/05/20/1030208/the-quiet-collapse-of-surveys-fewer-humans-and-more-ai-agents-are-answering-survey-questions
NPS over-fishing (Score:2)
The big audit companies have been pushing companies to do a lot more surveying - they're really harping on NPS for whatever reason.
That's why you can't ask to use a restroom without getting a survey about your experience.
I used to sometimes fill them out - they are actually useful to companies, and if I didn't hate them, that's OK with me.
But they're over-fishing. It is constant now. So fuck it, I refuse.
As far as the state, well, you don't tell the truth to fascists unless you're a suicidal moron. '
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NPS is big because it was the brainchild of well connected owner class society and MBAs and other ascendent-hopefuls hang on their every fucking word. It got pushed out at every business conference, trade-rag, and business administration podcast.
I quickly associated it with mismanagement and pretty much only ever answer it to poison the data and get revenge on some faceless MBA that i know i would hate working for.
History (Score:4, Informative)
Kids: To make clear the summary, landline phones had caller ID when the feature was invented, available as add-on boxes or possibly integrated into the phones that had LCDs. Also, upon hearing a dial tone, a user could enter a key combination to determine the number of the last caller (for a small phone company fee).
Trump fired a BS Commissioner ? (Score:4, Funny)
He has to commission BS? I thought he had an infinite personal supply.
I'd a thought brown was the colour of concentrated BS not orange. Even the colour of BS is BS.
Kind of? (Score:4, Insightful)
The BLS monthly numbers are always off when the underlying economy is changing rapidly, because of the "birth death problem", meaning that when large numbers of companies are being created or closed (born or died), the surveys that provide the quick data are guaranteed to be quite far off because the surveys go to companies that are already establish, i.e. those that weren't just born and didn't just die. So when there's a lot of market change, they're sampling the part of the market that is changing less. This means the estimates are off, and the faster the economy is changing the further off they are.
A related issue is that the survey results are only a sample, but BLS needs to extrapolate to the entire population of businesses -- but they don't actually know how many businesses there are in the country, much less how many fit into each of the size / revenue / industry buckets. So their extrapolation necessarily involves some [1]systematic guesswork [bls.gov]. In normal, stable economic times good guesses are easy because it's not going to be that much different from the prior year and will likely have followed a consistent trend. But when the economy is changing rapidly, that's not true, so the guesses end up being further off the mark.
Second, it's worse when things are turning for the worse, because of something kind of like "survey fatigue", but not. The problem is that when lots of the surveyed companies are struggling, they're focused on fighting for their existence and don't have time to bother filling out voluntary government reporting forms. It's not that they're tired of surveys, but that they just don't have the time and energy to spare. And, of course, the companies that are going out of business are also the ones w
The phone thing is a red herring, because these BLS surveys are not conducted over the phone.
A new issue compounding the above is that the BLS was hit hard by DOGE cuts and early retirements. They've lost over 20% of their staff, and the loss in experience and institutional knowledge is far larger than that, because the people who were fired and the people who took the buyouts tended to be very senior. So a lot of the experience that would be used to improve the estimates has walked out the door.
Anyway, the core problem is that the economy is going into the toilet, really fast. The BLS didn't break out how much of the 911,000 fewer new jobs were added 2024 vs 2025, but I'll bet a big percentage were after Trump started bludgeoning American businesses with tariffs. Most of that pain won't really be known until the 12-month report next year, because the monthly reports are going to continue underestimating the rate of change. Well, assuming the BLS staff isn't forced to cook the books, in which case we'll just never know.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesbd.htm
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Hmm. Lost the end of my sentence there somehow:
> And, of course, the companies that are going out of business are also the ones w ho are least likely to spend time filing out a survey
survey response numbers (Score:2)
are always low. Like, only a few percent of people respond to random requests for survey info.
Plus, nowadays, why would people even bother? The Trump admin is busy deleting every scrap of public data from the web. I don't really get it, but somehow, scrubbing all data off government websites must play well on Fox. Maybe it's a small-government thing. Or maybe it's just to trigger-the-libs. To me, it just screams "ignorance is bliss".
Whatever the reason is, the top of the government has made it clear t
[ ] Great Boomer [ ] OK Boomer [ ] Poor Boomer (Score:2)
I know only one thing about Millennials and Gen Z, but apparently that's still more than these purported professionals: Don't call, text.
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Today you'd need to do TikTok to get the younger generation.
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unknown texter = auto-block and report as spam. Even faster than voice.
Boomers and older GenX (Score:2)
Leadership of our society hasn't been this old since most of them were young. Our processes aren't evolving and now, much like an old man punching zero and screaming at an IVR that they want to talk to a person, these processes no longer do what they want.
Usually they're not receptive to any young person who doesn't do things "right"
Maybe related (Score:4, Insightful)
I start to answer an online survey
The first few questions are applicable and I answer them
Then, in following pages, questions are presented that are irrelevant or not applicable
There is no option to pick N/A
I leave it blank
The site demands that all questions be answered
I quit the survey
egov (Score:2)
I expect egovernment stuff will make this easier - i.e. the government app that ends up on everyone's phone (digital ID, healthcare etc) could prompt you to answer 1 question from time to time for a chance to win an Amazon voucher or something.
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> I expect egovernment stuff will make this easier
No, it won't. The numbers ultimately published are massaged by agencies run by political appointees. Formulae are tailored to fit narratives and ultimately what we get is propaganda.
Your scheme, for instance: Who will be participating, and who will be eligible for a reward? These calls will be made by political forces.
Erosion of Public Trust (Score:2)
The increasingly heated bickering between "Team Red" and "Team Blue", along with the vitriol coming from various social media "pundits", has led to a deep distrust of anyone or anything outside of our trusted circles.
The words of Abraham Lincoln come to mind. The United States is a nation divided and unless that is remedied I'm not sure how much longer it will stand.
As always, I hope to be proved wrong.
Survey Burnout (Score:2)
Even if I were to notice a government survey on one of my forms of communication, the response would be to delete the request, and most likely block the caller / sender. We're living in an age where everything is a reason for a survey. Order a pizza? Survey. Get gas for your car / lawnmower? Survey. Order a book from a retailer? Survey. Need customer service? "Please stay on the line for a brief survey."
People are DONE with pointless surveys. And government surveys have the added deficit of being "governmen
So, another issue (Score:1)
Another issue is there is so much garbage cold calling going on and phishing via snail mail and otherwise that it is not really safe to talk to folks (or businesses) you don't already know and have met face to face. Things improve if I start the conversation, but I don't expect contact outside of businesses and even they have issues wasting time with folks that cold call them.
Or... (Score:1, Insightful)
...maybe an informed public is now realizing that government economic data has always been unreliable?
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> ...maybe an informed public is now realizing that government economic data has always been unreliable?
...what US public are you referring to as "an informed public"? As someone with a general public facing job in the US, I can assure you that the general population is not well informed.
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You see they mean "The President called it into question for his own personal reasons and without evidence but the evidence thing is not important so we have to take his marching orders and post-facto try to justify it".
It's a reality distortion field going into effect, the numbers *have* to be corrupt because the numbers reflect poorly on decisions.
That's what Biden should have just done when inflation was hitting like 7% MoM in 2021-22. Just say the numbers are wrong! Political enemies! Fire the stats pe
Really getting sick and tired (Score:5, Insightful)
Of people who aren't experts complaining about experts doing their thing. You know damn well us nerds would have a fit if somebody went off on one of our little interests.
The data is consistent. That's what matters. You use data to make predictions. If the data is off but off at a consistent and predictable amount then you can predict that and take action accordingly.
This thing where everybody thinks they can just will their preferred universe into existence and ignore reality is something dictators and fascists have been pushing for pretty much forever.
It doesn't work. Sooner or later reality always wins in the end and reality has a well-known liberal bias.
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lol "informed public"