The Jobs Numbers Don’t Lie, But Politicians Do: Kathryn Edwards

Amid all the lies put forth by Republicans during this campaign, a remark last week from Senator Marco Rubio might have gotten lost: He said the strong employment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing 254,000 new jobs for September, was “another fake jobs report.”

This is no harmless half-truth. Rubio is accusing civil servants of routinely breaking the law by fabricating data in order to influence an election. The last politician to so brazenly attack the BLS was President Richard Nixon. It’s an instructive if shameful episode of US history.

As background, even aside from the political invective, ...