High Country Times

Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Chairman Bob Good (R-VA) have expressed concerns over the Department of Labor's handling of job data releases. They sent a letter to Acting Secretary Julie Su regarding issues with the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) revisions to jobs data released in August.

The lawmakers criticized the DOL for providing information to external parties while withholding it from Congress. In their letter, they stated: “DOL’s failure to respond to the basic requests and questions in the Committee’s first request was reprehensible, given that BLS quickly released emails related to this incident to a news agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. … On December 4, DOL provided a narrative response to the Committee’s September and October letters but did not provide any of the specific documents and communications that had been requested. … A narrative response is not an adequate substitute. Moreover, it is perplexing that DOL would provide information to a news organization via a FOIA request and then withhold that same information from the Committee.”

Foxx and Good further accused the Biden-Harris administration's DOL of making "willful deficiency" a norm during oversight processes. They wrote: “Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris DOL has made willful deficiency the norm when the Committee conducts oversight. Time and time again, DOL has obfuscated, failing to address the Committee’s direct questions. Instead, DOL has played games with the Committee, dancing around issues, providing incomplete responses, and treating the Committee’s requests as an a la carte menu—picking and choosing what Biden-Harris DOL appointees will respond to."

The letter concluded by emphasizing that such actions undermine public trust: “The general attitude of DOL toward the Committee’s inquiries suggests a lack of respect for Congress and the people the legislative branch represents. This aversion to accountability undermines public trust and confidence in DOL."

Background incidents include reports from March about nonpublic information being shared by a BLS economist with Wall Street firms; accidental early release of consumer price index data on May 15; premature release of job numbers on August 21; exaggerated job growth claims corrected by revised BLS numbers on August 26; unanswered congressional demands on September 25; ignored follow-up inquiry on October 25; incomplete response from DOL on December 4 despite sharing materials with Bloomberg; and briefings held without notice on December 10 where significant information was shared with private individuals.