It's hard not to anticipate a rate cut right around the corner. But it's also kind of refreshing to be in a place where there is a meaningful rate cut the Federal Reserve can make.
If I was going to try and deceive someone, I probably wouldn't publish a revision contradicting my previous numbers. I'd publish something saying the previous numbers were correct.
If you want to keep posting numbers that show that some metric is getting better and better, you are mathematically forced to go back and reset the baselines every so often, because otherwise you're going to claim that the United States has a billion and a half jobs before long.
Plus, revisions are expected and normal. These stats are hard, and over time more data comes in about the past. What gets suspicious is how consistently the revisions are always in the direction of worse, for whatever "worse" is for the given metric. "Random" errors ought to be distributed more-or-less around zero. It indicates, if not proves, that there are more politics in these numbers than we'd like for supposedly objective metrics.
But... if you think about it hard enough, and perhaps have a dash of cynicism, it's what you'd expect. It just requires something that pretty much everyone reading this has personal experience of doing with their own managers. You know which direction to shade the results, to indicate how far the bug is towards being fixed or whatever. Nobody has to tell you. You figure it out pretty quickly.
But then you can get caught for lying or at least being incompetent, instead of just playing it off as "statistics is hard :(" If the initial claims get more press than the revisions, then it pays off. I'm really curious how often the revised figures are worse, rather than better. I have a feeling the revised figures are always worse for whatever administration is in power.
Run with bogus numbers, let the narrative set in, release revised numbers, and they hurt you for a few days but are quickly forgotten. Especially if they are released during the middle of your convention where every major outlet is absorbed with releasing puff pieces about how the VP pick is "America's dad".
I have the counter-reaction - this is incredibly complex data that has to be collected, and expecting it to be perfectly correct immediately every quarter is kind of nuts.
Yeah, I thought it was well known that the data is messy. They make educated guesses off the data they have monthly, and then continue to clean it up as they get more data.
Such a big revision shows the Fed may already be behind with cuts. Odds were already 100% for a cut in Sept, this new data continues to move the odds up from 25bps to 50bps.
As an aside, big government conspiracies always make me laugh because they often come from the same people who say government is incompetent.
These numbers are calculated with a lot of statistical inference. That means, among other things, that the numbers calculated at the start of a downturn end up being way off because the markets change quicker than calculations of trends.
I think politicians desperately want to report only positive news, and with the election coming up, it might make it easy for them to overlook certain ethical parameters. I don't know if this was purposeful deception, perhaps optimistic deception is a better way of putting it.
You can either choose accurate numbers or timely reports, but you can't have both.
If you want accuracy, then we need to wait for the QCEW report to be released. This is quarterly, so we wont know what the employment number for January is.. until possibly late April or Early May.
Do you care what employment was 5 months ago?
Thats why there is an annual benchmarking process, where we look back at the previous 5 quarters of QCEW data and are able to reconcile the differences.
The monthly estimation is like playing the "telephone" game. Maybe you played as a child. One person whispers a phrase into the ear of the person next to them and it gets whispered down a big line of people. Once at the end everybody laughs at how different the final phrase is compared to the original phrase.
The further away we get from the benchmarked data is the same as being further away from the first time the phrase was whispered - noise WILL enter the data - and it will begin to diverge from the "universe", or the original phrase in the telephone game.
There is no conspiracy. There are literally millions of businesses who report their employment data every month. There are easily 100+ eyes on the employment data at the BLS.
It is statistically impossible that all 100 BLS employees and the millions of reporters are all in a big "help Biden" conspiracy and there isn't a single iota of evidence or whisperings of a conspiracy.
While we need to hold data to the highest standard, these wild thoughts without proof are dangerous. The new norm of suggesting conspiracies without any evidence is a scary future for me.
> The revisions, which are preliminary, are part of an annual process in which monthly estimates, based on surveys, are reconciled with more accurate but less timely records from state unemployment offices. The new figures, once finalized, will be incorporated into official government employment statistics early next year.
Or you could just assume everything is a stupid conspiracy
It's actually not. It's only unbelievable if you don't realize this happens literally all the time.
FTA: The revisions, which are preliminary, are part of an annual process
Annual process. It happens around this time every year.
> I can't see any reason for a revision this big as anything other than purposeful deception.
Your ignorance doesn't make it deception. The argument you are making here is that someone wanted to hide these figures until less than 100 days out from the election?
If you want to go down the road of conspiracy theories: Who would benefit from that, I wonder?
The reality is this is normal, and the only people raising a fuss about this are people who don't know this happens routinely and this is not abnormal, or people who have an agenda they are pushing through deception.
But let's say it's ordinary. I'll bet that if a different admin wins the election, the same people saying this is no big deal will make it a big deal, specially if it's around mid-term elections. That's just how it is.
The numbers were rosy but all the people I knew looking for jobs had a hard time landing things in contradiction of the numbers. People started doubting themselves. But I think to anyone it was obvious the numbers were wrong. In previous years, even 2022 and 2023, there was a constant stream of recruiters who late last year and all this year had dried up...
These numbers have very little to do with a small sample of people looking for a job. Something like ~5-10 million people are looking for work at any given time, this is changes that by about 0.07 million per month.
What matters to your social circle isn’t overall jobs but how well each sector is doing. LLM’s for example probably have negligible impact on 99% of the economy but that 1% has seen real disruption.
What would be the point of the deception? To keep rates high? Politically it would be very stupid (dropping a bomb 100 days before a national election).
I haven't received a meaningful human response to my CV for two years now. First contact of any human is salary requirement and it's not 120% of pre-Covid levels but rather 80%. Big businesses shook off all employees but the most desperate and docile.
One, you either didn't understand your link or over simplified to extract the scenario that fitted your view, that is not a very healthy way to discourse for you nor for the community. Saying you have long covid does not mean you can claim disability nor that you get money for said disability, it's like step one on a thirty step process.
Two, you would be surprised at how quickly staying home not doing anything gets boring. Ask any at home parent after the kids "went away". That there is a share of the population who would enjoy this yes, that this is most people no. We're simply not made to not have challenges and activity in life, both physically nor mentally.
Long COVID is a well documented health issue affecting many workers. Here is a recent publication in nature regarding how many hours are being lost in various economies.
National press is wedded to the narrative of "soft" "cracking" etc. but any way you look at it this nation is almost dangerously over-employed. When the labor force is bouncing off all-time highs, any direction you look is down, if you are a dedicated doom journalist.
Look at wages, not jobs. Someone working three jobs who cannot make ends meet is not a success story, it is a symptom of dysfunction.
“You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that."
To a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005”
― George W. Bush
Businesses are trying to squeeze as hard as possible to maintain margins and profit levels previously seen (running "lean", outsourcing to India and South America, etc). Regardless, it is time to cut rates, no less than 50 bps next month. Preserve the labor market, to hell with the last of inflation unlikely to be squeezed out because of housing shortages and corporate consolidation.
Tech and Google are not the economy, broadly speaking. They are microcosms in a macro of ~157 million US workers (give or take).
I tend to agree that it's a pointless race to the bottom with too many jobs per household, but that's really a game theoretic outcome. If your neighbors want to "get ahead" by having two employed adults, or several jobs each, then it basically forces you to earn equivalently or you'll be priced out.
However, the most interesting thing to note is the discourse. You and the sibling commenter have advanced incompatible and opposite narratives.
OK, I am looking at it right now. Prime-age workforce participation rate stands at 84%, a 20-year high and nearly the all-time high. What did you want it to be? Have you actually ever seen this stat?
The Ukranian forces are still at least 600km away from Moscow. I doubt they would be able to achieve the same speed of advance as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group_rebellion . The advance is still through lightly populated areas and has yet to reach the Kursk nuclear reactor. The main side effect is likely to be a few hundred thousand internal refugees and Russia starting to fill its own territory with landmines, rather than just its defensive lines in Ukraine.
Honestly the most plausible explanation for same is that tech people are so overpaid with so much excess savings that they can easily spend years between jobs for no reason.
Not to mention that software has indeed eaten the world, and now there's not much left on the menu. Especially with the recent AI hype (which is of course the end of the road, software will eat itself too).
So we will see how long these salaries are sustainable. (Oh, and of course there was a definite overproduction of developers, when everyone and their dog assumed that remote will be the undisputed default during the pandemic.)
> Honestly the most plausible explanation for same is that tech people are so overpaid with so much excess savings that they can easily spend years between jobs for no reason.
I like how people in tech are always overpaid but IP trolls, investment bankers, and physicians running "telehealth" (pay and play) clinics aren't.
People in this industry just seethe with envy whenever anyone makes more than they do. I don't know what it is so special about this particular industry that makes everyone want to be a crab in a bucket so fucking hard.
Readit News
Plus, revisions are expected and normal. These stats are hard, and over time more data comes in about the past. What gets suspicious is how consistently the revisions are always in the direction of worse, for whatever "worse" is for the given metric. "Random" errors ought to be distributed more-or-less around zero. It indicates, if not proves, that there are more politics in these numbers than we'd like for supposedly objective metrics.
But... if you think about it hard enough, and perhaps have a dash of cynicism, it's what you'd expect. It just requires something that pretty much everyone reading this has personal experience of doing with their own managers. You know which direction to shade the results, to indicate how far the bug is towards being fixed or whatever. Nobody has to tell you. You figure it out pretty quickly.
Well, it's not just you and your manager.
The employment numbers have been so sketchy that this was pretty much predicted by the people who looked at them
I don't expect numbers to be perfect, but with the amount of data access and computing we have, 28 percent off seems like a large amount.
Such a big revision shows the Fed may already be behind with cuts. Odds were already 100% for a cut in Sept, this new data continues to move the odds up from 25bps to 50bps.
As an aside, big government conspiracies always make me laugh because they often come from the same people who say government is incompetent.
If you could do a better job, I'm sure the Federal Reserve would be interested.
This is a ~30% miss for the year, which is historically large, but not egregious.
https://www.marquetteassociates.com/nonfarm-payroll-employme...
Deleted Comment
Believe it or not, I work at the BLS.
You can either choose accurate numbers or timely reports, but you can't have both.
If you want accuracy, then we need to wait for the QCEW report to be released. This is quarterly, so we wont know what the employment number for January is.. until possibly late April or Early May.
Do you care what employment was 5 months ago?
Thats why there is an annual benchmarking process, where we look back at the previous 5 quarters of QCEW data and are able to reconcile the differences.
The monthly estimation is like playing the "telephone" game. Maybe you played as a child. One person whispers a phrase into the ear of the person next to them and it gets whispered down a big line of people. Once at the end everybody laughs at how different the final phrase is compared to the original phrase.
The further away we get from the benchmarked data is the same as being further away from the first time the phrase was whispered - noise WILL enter the data - and it will begin to diverge from the "universe", or the original phrase in the telephone game.
There is no conspiracy. There are literally millions of businesses who report their employment data every month. There are easily 100+ eyes on the employment data at the BLS.
It is statistically impossible that all 100 BLS employees and the millions of reporters are all in a big "help Biden" conspiracy and there isn't a single iota of evidence or whisperings of a conspiracy.
Welcome to the nature of statistics!
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1exrj5u/comment/...
Or you could just assume everything is a stupid conspiracy
It's actually not. It's only unbelievable if you don't realize this happens literally all the time.
FTA: The revisions, which are preliminary, are part of an annual process
Annual process. It happens around this time every year.
> I can't see any reason for a revision this big as anything other than purposeful deception.
Your ignorance doesn't make it deception. The argument you are making here is that someone wanted to hide these figures until less than 100 days out from the election?
If you want to go down the road of conspiracy theories: Who would benefit from that, I wonder?
The reality is this is normal, and the only people raising a fuss about this are people who don't know this happens routinely and this is not abnormal, or people who have an agenda they are pushing through deception.
But let's say it's ordinary. I'll bet that if a different admin wins the election, the same people saying this is no big deal will make it a big deal, specially if it's around mid-term elections. That's just how it is.
The numbers were rosy but all the people I knew looking for jobs had a hard time landing things in contradiction of the numbers. People started doubting themselves. But I think to anyone it was obvious the numbers were wrong. In previous years, even 2022 and 2023, there was a constant stream of recruiters who late last year and all this year had dried up...
What matters to your social circle isn’t overall jobs but how well each sector is doing. LLM’s for example probably have negligible impact on 99% of the economy but that 1% has seen real disruption.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/27/4-in-10-companies-say-theyve...
Deleted Comment
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/medical/20240821-OYT1T50067/
The US has a scary picture too with ~11% of adults affected today:
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/long-covid-update-20...
https://www.hhs.gov/civil-rights/for-providers/civil-rights-...
Two, you would be surprised at how quickly staying home not doing anything gets boring. Ask any at home parent after the kids "went away". That there is a share of the population who would enjoy this yes, that this is most people no. We're simply not made to not have challenges and activity in life, both physically nor mentally.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03173-6/tables/1
“You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that."
To a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005” ― George W. Bush
Businesses are trying to squeeze as hard as possible to maintain margins and profit levels previously seen (running "lean", outsourcing to India and South America, etc). Regardless, it is time to cut rates, no less than 50 bps next month. Preserve the labor market, to hell with the last of inflation unlikely to be squeezed out because of housing shortages and corporate consolidation.
Tech and Google are not the economy, broadly speaking. They are microcosms in a macro of ~157 million US workers (give or take).
However, the most interesting thing to note is the discourse. You and the sibling commenter have advanced incompatible and opposite narratives.
Look at labor participation rates. And percentage of stem degree holders working in stem fields.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1sW5m
So we will see how long these salaries are sustainable. (Oh, and of course there was a definite overproduction of developers, when everyone and their dog assumed that remote will be the undisputed default during the pandemic.)
I like how people in tech are always overpaid but IP trolls, investment bankers, and physicians running "telehealth" (pay and play) clinics aren't.
People in this industry just seethe with envy whenever anyone makes more than they do. I don't know what it is so special about this particular industry that makes everyone want to be a crab in a bucket so fucking hard.