Not challenging, Bud -- literally just thinking: would the fact that May is also the month for most college graduations have any effect on the wonky numbers?
No, because graduates for both highschool and college are already in the overall population count, and from there fall either into the labor force or not in the labor force.
Moreover, graduation would not explain the drop in the number of employed. Theoretically it could explain the rise in unemployment, but the increase in unemployed new entrants to the labor force is too small.
Suffice it to say, the Employment Situation Summary is not a realistic depiction of the state of employment in the United States. Either the Household Survey is woefully inaccurate, the Establishment Survey is woefully inaccurate or (more likely, IMHO), both are woefully inaccurate.
Certainly the ADP National Employment Report's variance from the Employment Situation Summary provides an independent look at employment that poses a challenge to the BLS numbers--and even at that there is no firm guarantee the ADP report is highly accurate.
This is the problem these statistics yield: without accurate employment statistics, there is no way to gauge the truth health of US labor markets. Which means Jay Powell's appraisal of that aspect of his rate-hike strategy on inflation rests on bad data, which is the surest way possible to make bad decisions.
Even if the data IS accurate (the least likely scenario), the numbers merely bring us back to the argument I've been making for months: Powell's rate-hike strategy is not working. It's not bringing down inflation and it's not tamping down employment as a precursor to tamping down consumption which is Powell's precursor to tamping down inflation.
Not challenging, Bud -- literally just thinking: would the fact that May is also the month for most college graduations have any effect on the wonky numbers?
No, because graduates for both highschool and college are already in the overall population count, and from there fall either into the labor force or not in the labor force.
Moreover, graduation would not explain the drop in the number of employed. Theoretically it could explain the rise in unemployment, but the increase in unemployed new entrants to the labor force is too small.
So it instead becomes slightly more nonsensical?
It drives me batty on this end of the pipeline.
My wife has 12 people in her bakery.
Four of them are mother-daughter teams and four of them are retirees.
Eight bakers have at least two jobs. (That number includes retirees and mums:daughters.) Three of them have three jobs. One is working FOUR.
That’s 12 people and 24 jobs. (Also that’s serendipitous symmetry actually. I didn’t expect.)
That’s just so they can make it by.
Those are the kind of employment/unemployment numbers I think about and worry about.
Meanwhile, food prices up here have skyrocketed in the almost three years since we moved up here.
I have theories and “I wonders” but there’s very little I’ve seen in terms of legit explanations.
So what the Fed does just seems like fun with numbers that aren’t tethered to reality.
Suffice it to say, the Employment Situation Summary is not a realistic depiction of the state of employment in the United States. Either the Household Survey is woefully inaccurate, the Establishment Survey is woefully inaccurate or (more likely, IMHO), both are woefully inaccurate.
Certainly the ADP National Employment Report's variance from the Employment Situation Summary provides an independent look at employment that poses a challenge to the BLS numbers--and even at that there is no firm guarantee the ADP report is highly accurate.
This is the problem these statistics yield: without accurate employment statistics, there is no way to gauge the truth health of US labor markets. Which means Jay Powell's appraisal of that aspect of his rate-hike strategy on inflation rests on bad data, which is the surest way possible to make bad decisions.
Even if the data IS accurate (the least likely scenario), the numbers merely bring us back to the argument I've been making for months: Powell's rate-hike strategy is not working. It's not bringing down inflation and it's not tamping down employment as a precursor to tamping down consumption which is Powell's precursor to tamping down inflation.
As Karl Denninger @Market Ticker ( https://market-ticker.org/ ) often calls it - 'The Bureau of Lies and Scams"!!!
Linking today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Maybe JP Sears could do a clever skit with these jobs numbers. How *do* you get more jobs filled but higher unemployment anyway?
"How do I do new math with an old math mind?"
-Linus (Peanuts)
How to do new math
https://youtu.be/zWPn3esuDgU