A spokesperson for the department’s Office of the Inspector General said Wednesday that it is launching a review of “the challenges that Bureau of Labor Statistics encounters collecting and reporting closely watched economic data.”
The audit will focus on the agency’s reports on inflation and employment, a Wednesday letter to BLS acting commissioner William Wiatrowski said. Both reports are considered definitive measures of those two key aspects of the U.S. economy. The letter was from Laura Nicolosi, assistant inspector general for audit at the Labor Department’s inspector general.
On Tuesday, the BLS released annual revisions to its employment figures that showed there were 911,000 fewer jobs created in the year ending in March 2025, a deep reduction that suggested the job market was much weaker in 2024 and earlier this year than previously thought.
The initial data is compiled based on surveys of about 120,000 companies, and the revisions are then made based on actual job rolls employers then submit quarterly to state unemployment tax offices.
The large downward revision has increased pressure on the Federal Reserve to reduce its key interest rate, in hopes that cheaper borrowing costs will help revive the growth and job gains.
“This is exactly why we need new leadership to restore trust and confidence in the BLS’s data on behalf of the financial markets, businesses, policymakers, and families that rely on this data to make major decisions,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
