Perils of manipulated government data

This article from the NYT* was written in response to the firing of US head of Bureau of Labour Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, but is pretty evergreen as most of the article is spent discussing the history of unreliable government data. It gives lots of reasons as to why reliable economic data is important and gives some nice case studies which students can research further. There is also a section looking at private alternatives, which could lead to an interesting discussion on national data as a public good.

This article has earned itself a spot in my Macro Measures unit.

I think NYT offer access to 10 articles a month with a free account so it's probably worth copy-pasting. I recommend the PrintFriendly Chrome extension to make this super easy.