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founding
Mar 9, 2023Liked by Peter Nayland Kust

Hiring is down 23% from Jan 2022 to Jan 2023? How can the mainstream media not acknowledge that fact? I swear, true journalism is dead, except for independent thinkers like you!

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Keep in mind that the LinkedIn report draws heavily on the LinkedIn membership. It's not as broad a labor market survey as the ADP report or the BLS JOLTS report, and so it is not terribly surprising that it shows as a bit of an outlier. That there is a decline is a much more relevant takeaway than the size of that decline.

As a general rule, one should not get too focused on individual statistics and statistical values. What is always far more meaningful and relevant is the broad statistical trend. What is far more meaningful about the LinkedIn report is that it independently confirms the macro trends that are visible in the ADP and BLS reports once you peel back the top layers a bit.

We see this even within the JOLTS report--despite the unrealistically elevated job opening stats, the trend line for those same stats indicates a measure of weakness and deterioration in the overall labor market even at those elevated levels which is echoed in the hiring data.

Similarly, Quits still outpace layoffs within the separations data--but the layoffs increased by a greater relative magnitude than the quits, which, coupled with the overall downward trend in quits, suggests labor markets are not the hotbed of hiring the media and the government types make them out to be.

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founding

Yes, we get such a huge amount of statistics generated today that you have to really work to get at the important conclusions. When I took a statistics course in college, I was amazed at the number of ways to statistically manipulate data - but now it seems like all we get is ‘spin’, and nothing but spin! It’s just propaganda in the media, ‘facts’ reported to advance an agenda. I appreciate a good analytical mind like yours digging out the crucial trends. Thanks!

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