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Scott Walker Falsely Claims Federal Agency Has Approved His Juiced Up Jobs Number

Earlier this week, Scott Walker tossed out the usual job creation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and released his own numbers for Wisconsin’s job creation in 2011. Original reports said Wisconsin had lost 33,900 jobs in 2011, but Walker’s numbers showed Wisconsin gaining 23,321.

Walker claimed that the BLS had approved his new numbers. But, it turns out, BLS has done nothing of the sort. The Walker campaign emailed BLS to see if they could use a new formula to calculate job creation, and BLS approved that. But BLS never endorsed the outcome of that calculation, the numbers that Walker is touting.

Politiscoop got in touch with the BLS, which confirmed that the exchange was not about the specific numbers that Walker input into his new formula, but rather the formula itself:

Politiscoop contacted the BLS today for verification of the claim. It turns out to be one of Walker’s biggest lies to date. In a conversation with a BLS representative, we found that the state of Wisconsin submitted a new formula in regard to jobs created or lost in the state. […]

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The BLS said “The Bureau can not comment on the fourth quarter numbers because they haven’t been released. I can say that we would not have confirmed the numbers yet, but would only have confirmed the methods used.

But without actual approval from BLS, Walker is still campaigning on that unconfirmed number, citing it as a statistic assessed by the BLS. Watch:

Not taking into account Walker’s numbers, Wisconsin has seen the largest job loss of any state over the last year. His attempt to improve the numbers seems to be a clear move to garner support in the run up to his hotly contested recall election, and to follow through on his promise of creating 250,000 jobs in his first term.