The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Economics => Topic started by: Ptarmigan on February 02, 2024, 09:15:10 PM
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Inside The Most Ridiculous Jobs Report In Recent History
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/inside-most-ridiculous-jobs-report-recent-history
On the surface, it was an blockbuster jobs report, certainly one which nobody expected. Starting at the top, the BLS reported that in January the US unexpectedly added 353K "jobs" - the most since January 2023 (when the print was 482K compared to 131K) , double the consensus forecast of 185K and more than the highest Wall Street estimate (300K from Natixis). In fact, this was a 4-sigma beat to estimate, unheard of in the past year.
(https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/payrolls%20exp_0.jpg?itok=BO7FA8pk)
The headline data was stellar across the board, starting with the unemployment rate which once again failed to rise - denying expectations from "Sahm's Rule" that a recession may have already started - all the way to average hourly earnings, which unexpectedly spiked from 4.1% (pre-revision) to 4.5%, the highest since last September, and a slap in the face to the Fed's disinflation narrative...
(https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/bfmDCB6_1.jpg?itok=USAzwiTH)
... or it would be if one didn't think of checking how the average rose: well, it turns out that, since average hourly earnings is a fraction, it did not rise due to a jump in actual wages but - since it is earnings over a period of time - "rose" because the BLS decided to sharply slash the number of estimated hours that everyone was working, from 34.3 to just 34.1, which may not sound like a lot until one realizes that the last time the workweek was this low was when the economy was shut down during covid. Excluding the covid lockdowns, one would have to go back to 2010 to find a workweek that was this anemic.
There 353,000 new jobs in January 2024. Not so fast. The work week is less. The last time that work week was slow were in 2010 and 2020 during COVID lockdown.
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Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
If you torture data long enough, it will confess.
Especially during an election year.
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But now Jerome has to rethink lowering the federal funds rate.