JEFF SOMMER2025年8月12日 Pete RyanImagine living in a country where you can’t trust the government’s numbers.想象一下，生活在一个你无法信任政府公布的数据的国家会是什么样子。I don’t have to imagine it. I spent time in China and the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Numbers that reflected poorly on the government or the ruling party sometimes didn’t appear at all or were massaged carefully before they were published.我不必去想象。上世纪80年代，我曾在中国和苏联待过一段时间。那些会让政府或执政党颜面无光的数据有时会完全消失，有时则会经过精心修饰后才公布。Over drinks in Beijing more than 40 years ago, a senior Chinese statistician explained the earnest efforts that he and his colleagues were making to measure the economy. “It can be awkward,” he said. “The officials don’t always want to see what we have to report.”40多年前，在北京一次饮酒闲聊时，一位中国高级统计官员和我谈起他和同事们为测算经济所作的真诚努力。“有时会很尴尬，”他说，“官员们并不总是愿意看到我们报告的内容。”No informed person believed all the official data, but there were workarounds. Foreign governments used satellite photos of rice paddies, steel plants during shift changes and the lights in major cities at night, along with other measures, to estimate the size of the harvest, steel production and electricity consumption. Even rough estimates were valuable.有见识的人都不会完全相信官方公布的所有数据，但总会有变通的办法。外国政府会利用稻田、钢厂换班时的卫星照片，以及主要城市夜晚的灯光等信息，再结合其他数据来估算粮食产量、钢铁产量和电力消耗。即便是粗略的估算，也有其价值。U.S. official data isn’t tainted like this, but it may be heading there.美国官方数据还没有像这样受到污染，但或许正朝着这个方向发展。President Trump didn’t like the numbers he was seeing in the latest government jobs report last Friday. So he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency in charge of producing them.特朗普总统不喜欢最新政府就业报告中的数据，于是他解雇了负责编制这些数据的劳工统计局局长。The president said the agency had manipulated the numbers for political reasons, but, as my colleague Ben Casselman has reported, most economists dismiss that claim.总统称该机构为了政治目的篡改了数据，但正如我的同事本·卡斯尔曼所报道的，大多数经济学家并不认同这种说法。The furor over statistics comes at a critical moment for the economy. So much is changing — with soaring tariffs, rising deportations and the artificial intelligence boom — that we need to know where the economy is heading. Mr. Trump has cast doubt on the official data precisely when we need it most.这场关于统计数据的风波发生在经济的关键时期。诸多事情都在发生变化——关税飙升、驱逐出境人数增加、人工智能热潮兴起——我们需要知道经济正走向何方。可就在我们最需要官方数据的时候，特朗普却让人们对它产生了怀疑。As a thought experiment, take this a few steps further. Imagine that there are more firings, more presidential accusations of bias, more intervention by political leaders in technical and scientific processes. Eventually, when enough technocrats are replaced and the dire consequences of truth-telling are clear, it could become impossible to rely on the official numbers.让我们再往前推几步，权当是个思考实验：想象一下，会有更多人被解雇，总统会提出更多关于数据存在偏见的指控，政治领导人会更多地干预技术和科学流程。最终，当足够多的技术专家被替换，且说真话的可怕后果变得显而易见时，人们可能就再也无法依赖官方数据了。“Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” Erica Groshen, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2013 to 2017, said in a phone conversation. “A very important part of our information infrastructure is at risk.”“有时候，有些东西只有在失去后才知道它的可贵，”2013年至2017年担任劳工统计局局长的埃里卡·格罗申在接受电话采访时说，“我们信息基础设施中非常重要的一部分正处于危险之中。”Ms. Groshen emphasized that as of now, the official data was solid. An able acting commissioner, William J. Wiatrowski, has been running the operation since the ouster of Erika McEntarfer, the widely respected and experienced commissioner. Civil Service employees are in place.格罗申强调，截至目前，官方数据还是可靠的。在广受尊敬且经验丰富的局长埃里卡·麦肯塔弗被解职后，能力出众的威廉·维亚特罗夫斯基担任代理局长，主持该机构的工作。公务员队伍也保持稳定。If anyone tampered with the data, Ms. Groshen said, “we’d hear from whistle-blowers, and employees would resign.” We’d know about it.格罗申说，要是有人篡改数据，“我们会听到举报者的声音，员工也会辞职。”我们会知道这些。Even if those numbers couldn’t be counted on, there would be plenty of workarounds. In a big data and A.I. world, private companies already extract and produce vast streams of information on what we do, how much we do it and what it means for the economy. You can’t buy an ice cream cone without some data outfit knowing it and making inferences about your personal preferences, the state of the ice cream industry and consumers at large.即便这些数据不可靠了，也总会有很多变通的办法。在这个大数据和人工智能的时代，私营企业已经在不断提取和生成大量关于我们做了什么、做了多少，以及这些行为对经济意味着什么的信息。你买一个冰淇淋甜筒，都会有数据机构知晓此事，并据此推断你的个人偏好、冰淇淋行业的状况以及整体消费者的情况。Compiling all of this information into reliable, open, public statistics, and making it available to everyone at the same time, is another matter. This information is crucial for decision-making at every level: from personal choices about what to buy and how to invest to executive decisions about the directions that companies need to take.但将所有这些信息整合为可靠、公开、公共的统计数据，并同时向所有人开放，就是另一回事了。这些信息对于各个层面的决策都至关重要：从个人购买什么、如何投资的选择，到企业关于发展方向的决策。“Official statistics are a public good,” Ms. Groshen said. “Over the long run, there’s no replacement for the government. No private-sector company has the incentive to produce trustworthy official statistics that are available to everybody at no cost.”“官方统计数据是一种公共产品，”格罗申说，“从长远来看，政府在这方面的作用无可替代。没有哪家私营企业有动力去生成可信赖的、免费向所有人开放的官方统计数据。”The Work Goes On工作仍在继续At the Bureau of Labor Statistics, long-established procedures for data review and revision resulted last Friday in the downward adjustments of the jobs numbers that infuriated Mr. Trump.劳工统计局有着长期以来形成的数据审核和修订程序，就业数据下修正是这一程序的结果，而这一调整激怒了特朗普。Rather than accept that his own policies may have been responsible for the negative economic picture, the president attacked the bureau, saying the agency’s “numbers “were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”总统不接受是自己的政策可能导致了这种不佳的经济局面，反而攻击该机构，表示其数据“被篡改，目的是让共和党人和我难堪”。In fact, a review by Bespoke Investment Group of the bureau’s jobs reports over seven presidential election cycles since 1998 shows that it has been impartial. Periodic revisions of jobs numbers sometimes worked in favor of Republicans, sometimes Democrats.事实上，Bespoke投资集团对1998年以来七个总统选举周期内劳工统计局的就业报告进行的审查显示，该机构一直保持党派中立。就业数据的定期修订有时对共和党有利，有时对民主党有利。The Bespoke report noted that before the 2020 and 2024 elections, the bureau’s initial jobs numbers contained a “pretty significant overestimation of the job market,” benefiting the incumbents in the White House. Both lost (though Mr. Trump, of course, won his second bid for re-election in 2024). The bureau has been following transparent procedures without concern for politics, Bespoke noted.Bespoke投资集团的报告指出，在2020年和2024年大选前，该机构最初的就业数据都“对就业市场存在相当明显的高估”，这对白宫在任者有利。但这两次，两位在任者都输掉了选举（不过，当然，特朗普在2024年的再次竞选中获胜了）。Bespoke投资集团指出，劳工统计局一直遵循透明的程序，不掺杂政治因素。What to Look For值得关注的方面There are reasons to be worried about data integrity beyond Mr. Trump’s assault on the Bureau of Labor Statistics.除了特朗普对劳工统计局的攻击之外，还有一些理由让我们担心数据的完整性。Science statistics have been vanishing from government websites, with private volunteer efforts underway to preserve them. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has disbanded expert advisory committees devoted to improving the quality of data on inflation, employment and gross domestic product. Funding of statistical agencies has been cut.科学统计数据正从政府网站上消失，目前已有民间志愿者在努力进行保存。商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克解散了致力于改善通胀、就业和国内生产总值数据质量的专家咨询委员会。统计机构的资金也被削减。Because the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t see the monthly jobs report until it has been compiled, Ms. Groshen said, the appointment of a highly political commissioner wouldn’t necessarily alter the bureau’s data.格罗申表示，由于劳工统计局局长在数据编制完成后才能看到月度就业报告，因此任命一位高度政治化的局长未必会改变该机构的数据。“There are many processes and people in place who would protect it,” added Ms. Groshen, now a senior adviser at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Serious trouble might be ahead, however, if a new commissioner arrived with an entourage of political appointees.“有很多程序和人员就是用来保护这些数据的，”现任康奈尔大学工业与劳动关系学院高级顾问的格罗申补充道。不过，如果新任局长带来一批政治任命的下属，那可能就会出现严重的问题。Early Warnings早期预警Should government data be manipulated, academics and private sector employees would soon know it. Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford economist who works with the firm ADP to produce a monthly report on the labor market, said in a video chat that the latest ADP numbers and the Bureau of Labor Statistics revisions “track very closely.”如果政府数据真的被篡改，学术界和私营部门的人员很快就会发现。斯坦福大学经济学家埃里克·布林约尔松与ADP公司合作编制月度劳动力市场报告，他在接受视频采访时表示，最新的ADP数据与劳工统计局的修订数据“非常吻合”。If there were politically induced distortions, he said, “many private data sources are now available” and alarm bells would go off. For example, inflation statistics are available from PriceStats, a company that evolved from a project started by scholars at M.I.T. and Harvard.他说，如果出现政治导致的扭曲，“现在有很多可用的私营数据来源”会发出警报。例如，通胀统计数据可以从PriceStats公司获取，该公司源于麻省理工学院和哈佛大学学者发起的一个项目。But all the private data is intended as a supplement to government statistics, not a replacement for it. “We need much more investment in this, not less,” Professor Brynjolfsson said.但所有这些私营数据都旨在作为政府统计数据的补充，而非替代。“我们需要在这方面加大投入，而不是减少，”布林约尔松说。Without reliable official numbers, people with inside access to the best information would be at an even greater advantage than they are now.如果没有可靠的官方数据，那些能接触到内部优质信息的人将拥有比现在还要更大的优势。Losing trust in government statistics wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it would be the end of the world as we know it.对政府统计数据失去信任或许不是世界末日，但这将意味着我们所知的世界的终结。Jeff Sommer撰写有关市场、金融和经济的每周专栏"Strategies"。翻译：晋其角点击查看本文英文版。