Real estate billionaire Donald Trump says the Obama administration cooked the books to show a reduction in the unemployment rate.
On Friday, the Labor Department announced that the rate slid to 7.8 percent in September from 8.1 percent.
“I don’t believe the number and neither do any of the other people that have intelligence, because that number came out of nowhere,” Trump told Fox News.
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He echoed a post on Twitter from retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who wrote Friday: “Unbelievable jobs numbers. These Chicago guys will do anything. Can’t debate so change numbers.” Welch later said he should have added a question mark to the end of the tweet.
Many economists note that while payroll figures come from surveys of companies, unemployment data come from a monthly survey of households and are subject to greater error and revision.
That didn’t sway Trump. “I think that they did . . . a lot of monkey business,” he said. “I’m telling you, in a month and a half from now, they will do a readjustment like has been happening for the last year and a half. They will do a readjustment and the number will be 8.2 or more.”
Obama has opposed layoffs before the election in sectors like defense, Trump notes. “I mean, that’s monkeying with the numbers.”
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