I don’t know how high up in the Census Bureau the orders to fake employment survey data came from, but the director of the Philadelphia region was aware of those charges against one of his field representatives back in 2010.
Fernando E. Armstrong, the regional director at the time, admitted as much in an internal Census report I have reviewed.
And that field representative, Julius Buckmon, who filed as many as 100 fake reports a month — and admitted to me faking household survey reports — was not the only field rep to do so, according to a Census source.
And the source insists that the faking of the household survey, which could fudge the unemployment rate, is still happening.
So if Buckmon claimed higher-ups asked him to fake reports in 2010, why did the Census Bureau act so shocked Tuesday when I brought that matter up in a column?
Census never disclosed the accusations against Buckmon — either publicly or to the Labor Department, for whom the data was collected as part of the monthly jobless survey.
In a statement Tuesday, Census said, “We have no reason to believe that there was a systematic manipulation of the data described in media reports.”
Census takes these things seriously, it cross checks, it monitors etc, etc. You’ve seen this boilerplate before.
I can’t say if the faking of the jobs numbers was politically motivated or not — although most of the extra 100 monthly surveys submitted by Blackmon did contain info that people did get jobs.
That would have helped lower the unemployment rate.
More has to be done to find out just how widespread the problem is, and that is what I hope will now happen.
The House Oversight Committee and the Inspector General of the Census Bureau are now looking into these charges.
I’m also told that the Bureau of Labor Statistics — which pays Census to do surveys — is keenly interested.
Happy hunting, folks.
My unidentified source is still willing to testify if offered protection from retaliation.
The source told me that “multiple people” were doing what Buckmon was doing — making up people and attaching jobs so Census could meet the quota of interviews required by the Labor Department.
Buckmon said he was told to falsify data by a supervisor. And Buckmon got paid by the interview, so cutting corners and filing more surveys got him more pay.
In light of the fact that Census seems to have mishandled the Buckmon investigation in 2010, who can argue that a thorough investigation isn’t needed now?