Last year, as the US Federal Reserve kept raising interest rates to rein in inflation, Chair Jerome Powell kept pointing to one category of data that was guiding its decision: The labor market. But it’s possible that the labor market data-of-choice may have been faulty.

Having a clear picture of how Americans are really doing is crucial during a presidential election cycle. Bloomberg’s Saleha Mohsin talked with Claudia Sahm, an ex-Fed economist, and with Odd Lots podcast hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway about whether economists have the best data to make key decisions about the US economy.