336,000 Jobs?

Doubtful. Very Doubtful.

Sigh. It is telling that even the tongue-in-cheek appellation of “Lou Costello Labor Math” has lost its humorous edge when we discuss the serial fictions known as the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Employment Situation Summary. September’s report is no exception, for it is indeed a work of fiction.

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 336,000 in September, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.8 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality; government; health care; professional, scientific, and technical services; and social assistance.

336,000 new jobs, only unemployment did not change?

336,000 new jobs, only the number of workers not in the labor forced was only “little different”?

336,000 new jobs, only the number of workers employed only part time “changed little”?

336,000 new jobs, only the number of long term unemployed “was little changed”?

336,000 new jobs, only the “major labor market indicators from the survey of households showed little or no change over the month”?

Nothing changed on the employment front, but 336,000 new jobs were somehow magically created?

Let us say that I am doubtful. I am very doubtful.

Where to begin?

The corporate media certainly does not want to question the data, as it once again blindly regurgitates the BLS data, not even blinking at the revisions that were made for prior months.

The US economy added an estimated 336,000 jobs last month, blowing expectations out of the water, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.

It’s the largest monthly employment increase since January and is significantly above August’s net gain of 227,000 jobs, a total that was revised up by 40,000 from initial estimates.

What the corporate media conveniently overlooks is the July revision, which was double the August revision.

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised up by 79,000, from +157,000 to +236,000, and the change for August was revised up by 40,000, from +187,000 to +227,000. With these revisions, employment in July and August combined is 119,000 higher than previously reported.

In other words, in addition to the 336,000 jobs “created” in September, there was another 119,000 jobs created in the two months prior that magically got overlooked until now.

Keep in mind that in the August report the July total was revised down by 30,000, and now it is revised back up by 79,000.

Dementia Joe’s Twitter handlers of course choose to ignore these inconvenient data points as they tweet out his usual inane and undeserved victory lap over jobs that, in all probability, don’t exist.

Keep in mind also that the ADP National Employment Report showed only 89,000 jobs created for the month.

That is no small discrepancy. If the metrics were plausible and reliable and the methodologies were sound for both reports we should see some convergence between them. We do not.

Which report is the defective one? Without conclusive data to confirm one or the other, they both are suspect.

The fictional nature of the September report exceeds the August report only in the magnitude of the misreporting on jobs created.

187,000 Jobs In August? Not Exactly

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Even if we try to take the jobs report at face value, we still have the usual internal problems of construction to address.

Case in point: the 336,000 jobs created is the seasonally adjusted figure. The unadjusted number of jobs notionally created during the month of September is only 242,000. That might still be considered a good number, but it is achieved by a massive surge in part time jobs and a massive reduction in full time jobs.

Call me crazy, but I don’t see a shift from full-time to part-time work a boon to either the worker or the economy.

Those numbers are further complicated by the rise in multiple job holders of 123,000.

Call me crazy a second time, but I don’t see a surge in the number of people who have to work two jobs to make ends meet a boon to either the worker or the economy.

Additionally, the unadjusted data indicates that the gain in employment did not come from the private sector at all. Total nonfarm employment increased, but private employment—including both goods-producing and service-producing jobs—declined significantly.

If we take the BLS jobs report at face value, then Bidenomics has gifted the US with a pile of government jobs in September.

Call me crazy a third time, but I don’t see more government bureaucrats as a boon to the economy. Government workers might like it, but taxpayers…not so much.

We should also note that the Household Survey portion of the BLS jobs report hews much closer to the ADP National Employment Report.

ADP reported 89,000 new jobs in September. The BLS Household Survey reported 86,000 new jobs in September.

Of course, the negative here is that while employment rose by 86,000, the number of individuals not in the labor force at all rose by 124,000.

Again, call me crazy, but more people opting out of the workforce than finding jobs is not what I would call a healthy jobs trend.

What appears to be a good shift—albeit one that got wiped out by the “seasonal adjustment”—is the level of unemployment dropped across the board in September.

People who left their job, got fired from their job, or looked for a job and couldn’t find one all declined in September, according to the unadjusted data.

Another less than optimistic trend that we are still seeing is in workers’ paychecks. Not only did earnings decline year on year in September, inflation is still outpacing the payroll.

Even month on month the growth in average earnings declined significantly in September—not an encouraging sign given where energy prices have been going of late (mostly up).

Workers are still seeing their paychecks get eaten alive by inflation, and neither Fed policy nor the feckless fiscal insanity that passes for policy at the White House is doing a damn thing about it.

In short, recognize that once again the BLS Employment Situation Summary is equal parts hogwash and horse hockey. There is no longer any point in even pretending to regard this bit of data from the BLS as in any way shape or form useful or reliable. It is neither.

There were nearly 120,000 worth of “revisions” to the prior two months this time around, just as there were 110,000 worth of “revision” to the prior two months in August. I would not be a bit surprised if the October report has another 100,000+ worth of revisions covering August and September—probably to the downside. In fact, I will be greatly surprised if something like that does not happen.

The BLS jobs report is broken. The BLS data gathering modalities are broken. The system itself is fundamentally broken. That is the only thing this garbage pile of “data” shows us about the state of employment in this country.