The Economy

Payrolls from April 2023 to March 2024 revised down 818,000.

 

Revised 30 percent down.

Welcome to the BLS.

 

So -- and I'm being serious -- we believe these numbers from BLS but not the ones on the first Friday of the month?

 

You need to do a few things. Look at data being produced by non-governmental entities about how strong or weak business activity is in the country. Look at things like the earnings retailers are reporting, and you wouldn't be surprised that the labor market has to have softenbed.

Ignore the BLS headline numbers. Dig into the actual reports, and take a look at the underlying survey data. For example, the household survey and the establishment survey they are feeding people have painted two diametrically opposite pictures -- to the point that it's Kabuki Theater. Then, even if you want to work with their "adjusted" numbers, dig into the subsets. You'll see things like a huge loss in full time jobs over the last few years, a huge increase in part-time jobs (that they are telling you is a "job" created). The numbers themselves might be political contrivances, but the subsets give you hints about what is under the surface. Another one is how the subset that has been showing that the number of "jobs" for native-born Americans has gone negative, while the numbers for people born elsewhere have been high. You can extropalate about the quality (and what type) of jobs we're actually producing. Take a look at what they put out sector by sector. Manufacturing has been falling off a cliff, governmental jobs have been the biggest source of "jobs" for the last 2 years (while our government has expanded). And also, ignore the headline numbers (for obvious reasons). ... but pay attention to the trends, month by month, because whatever the real numbers are, tha trend is probably true.

Then, you just need to use a little common sense. They count on a headline number being reported-- Joe Biden created 6 gazillion trillion gazillion jobs -- and people who want whatever they want to believe being validated getting all excited. But a slowing job market (off of one of the most unnaturally tight labor markets ever) shouldn't surprise anyone. When all the weight on the boats shifts one way, it tends to shift back. Think about it. During Covid they helicopter dropped a ton of "stimulus," which distorted things. Then the Fed was forced to hike rates (because of the effect on prices that had) and we went from a zero percent interest rate environment to 5.25 percent on the Fed Funds. OF COURSE that is going to slow things. They have offset the effects with other things, but it's still a fair degree of pumping the brakes. It's hard to predict how slowly or fast that kind of economic car is going to slow down, because of the difficulties in predicting how long it would take all of the stimulus to fully flow through investment and consumption (which affects business activity, which in turn effects employment). But it was always inevitable that what is probably going on right now was going to happen. So add that bit common sense to the picture a lot of other things are painting, and if something that seems pretty rational is happening, it shouldn't be surprising, even if the BLS is producing politicized, bullshit "data."

One thing to be aware of. I'm not talking about the bullshit numbers. ... I am talking about things the treasury is going to do and how they will structure governmental spending between now and November. They will keep using tricks to try to prevent the effects of a (perfectly natural) softening being apparent to a lot of people through the election.