David McNamara: Are economic statistics still trustworthy?

In Ireland, the concentration of a small number of very large multinationals often renders initial estimates of GDP useless

Data has been signalling a cooling of Irish jobs growth in 2025.

The firing of a little-known labour statistician by US President Donald Trump has brought to the fore an ongoing debate amongst economists — that is, whether macro statistics are becoming unreliable as the response rates to key surveys decline. 

In the US, major revisions to the benchmark payroll jobs survey are quite common and are typically shrugged off by investors and grumpy forecasters, whose models then require tweaking. In some cases, the revisions can completely shift the narrative of an economy, as was the case when US payrolls were recently revised sharply lower for May and June, precipitating a fall in interest rate expectations and a decline in the dollar.