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Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

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Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#51

Post by loudmax »

ajmurmann wrote: post #33
mathiaspoint wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sortition would help a little but at the end of the day this is why democracy just doesn't work in practice.

Lol, wut? Any system that's been working better in practice? There are small outlier countries like Singapore that have extremely well but at scale democratic countries have greatly outperformed other systems

There's the problem of scale, and also of duration. Let's say Lee Kuan Yew genuinely wants what's best for Singapore as a whole. How do you ensure that the next autocrat will be equally benign?

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#52

Post by analyte123 »

The ADP payroll report is noise. It is based on the payroll data from ADP only. The assumption of this report is that companies that use ADP to process their payroll are completely representative of the entire economy and that there is no regional, sector, or company stage bias to their customers. A firm with ADP laying employees off and 3 new firms with the same number of employees being founded and using a different payroll provider would be reported as a "loss" here. Maybe the private sector did lose jobs, but I wouldn't use this report to find out.

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#53

Post by quickthrowman »

Analemma_ wrote: post #15
kasey_junk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You of course know that we have a diverse set of metrics for unemployment that capture all of what you are talking about right? And that is before we talk about alternative signals like the ADP number this like references. Anytime someone says “we need better ways” you should just read it as “I should do more reading”, because this is a very well studied, understood and measured set of data.

Yes, it's extremely irritating every time people trot out the same copy-pasted complaints about the BLS unemployment rate and how wrong it is, ignoring the fact that the BLS publishes six different unemployment rates, which specifically address most of those complaints. It's a sign of terminal incuriosity and using only superficial and secondhand sources of information like news reports on the unemployment rate, and…

> It's a sign of terminal incuriosity and using only superficial and secondhand sources of information like news reports on the unemployment rate, and thinking this is enough to make you qualified to do critique.

Agreed, I just dismiss complaints about the unemployment rate unless the poster/speaker mentions/alludes to U1 to U6.

The OP in this comment chain is just ‘old man yells at clouds’ in HN form, complaining about a lack of statistics without checking to see if those statistics are measured (which they are).

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#54

Post by jimt1234 »

psunavy03 wrote: post #6

We really need better ways of measuring economic health. I could lose my six-figure job, turn around, and get hired on as a server at Applebee's for minimum wage, and the "unemployment" rate would stay the same. Not to mention that it doesn't include those not actively looking for work. Either way, "full employment" doesn't mean much unless you take into account whether people are actually able to live a stable lifes…

I think it's even worse, because that single metric, unemployment, is highly manipulatable. Administrations have been known to redefine "employment" in order to make the number look more favorable.

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#55

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

ajmurmann wrote: post #25
psunavy03 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is the media seems to only ever look at one of them at a time but we need to look at several at once to get a more complete picture. This is what I'm getting at. I recognize there are more detailed measures, but they also never seem to inform the public discourse.

Not to come off as too cynical but I've increasingly come to the conclusion that the public discourse stays generally at a very shallow level that basic research for 30 minutes quickly moves you beyond. On one hand I find that appalling and poisonous for a democracy. On the other hand, imagine everyone having to spend 30+ minutes on every important topic. It quickly gets out of hand. One could argue that the media sh…

> public discourse stays generally at a very shallow level that basic research for 30 minutes quickly moves you beyond

This is convincingly (to me) explained by the removal of critical thinking courses in public schools, at least in the US. I never experienced them myself but I've heard they included exercises like determining if a statement is fact or opinion, true or false, etc. There was very little of that when I was in school and it was certainly never a dedicated hour-block in high school.

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#56

Post by throwawayoldie »

deciduously wrote: post #27
jklinger410 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You of course know that we have a diverse set of metrics for unemployment that capture all of what you are talking about right? If I could never see another passive aggressive response like this again I would die happy.

You of course know that "you of course know _____, right" is the preferred HN rebuttal format, right?

Neck and neck with "Got an example of X?"

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#57

Post by doctorpangloss »

danans wrote: post #40
jimbokun wrote: post #31

> But the contraction was capped by payroll expansions in goods-producing roles across industries such as manufacturing and mining. All together, goods-producing positions grew by 32,000 in the month, while payrolls for service roles overall fell by 66,000. Is this tariffs working as intended?

If your metric is "more/better jobs", then yes tariffs are a failure. But in a roundabout sense ... yes they are working. At least if the goal is to discipline and squeeze labor, and return leverage to employers. Part of the goal of the tariffs (and other non-tariff related policies) seems to be to reset leverage at all layers of the labor markets, pushing higher skilled and paid workers into lower skilled and paid m…

[flagged]

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#58

Post by spacemadness »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #45
ajmurmann wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have good metrics. The problem is the media seems to only ever look at one of them at a time but we need to look at several at once to get a more complete picture. Your scenario would be called out by median household income, or better median disposable household income. Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. Workforce participation also can be valuable instead of or in addition to unemployment numbers…

> Even the good old GDP per capita covers your case. Absolutely not. If corporate revenue increases, but wages stay the same, GDP per capita goes up, yet the workers aren't any better off. All that extra money is being absorbed by the ones at the top. Median disposable household income is probably the best measure.

In this episode of how economists lie to us all…

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#59

Post by jordanb »

mywittyname wrote: post #35
psunavy03 wrote: post #6

We really need better ways of measuring economic health. I could lose my six-figure job, turn around, and get hired on as a server at Applebee's for minimum wage, and the "unemployment" rate would stay the same. Not to mention that it doesn't include those not actively looking for work. Either way, "full employment" doesn't mean much unless you take into account whether people are actually able to live a stable lifes…

> I could lose my six-figure job, turn around, and get hired on as a server at Applebee's for minimum wage, and the "unemployment" rate would stay the same. Not to mention that it doesn't include those not actively looking for work. This is captured as part of the "U-6" figure for unemployment. The thing is, at a large scale, these events don't matter. They are rare enough to be noise in the grand scheme of things. T…

U3 is kinda silly but is mostly used because it is the original employment rate definition and therefore is comparable across time.

U6 would not include the original poster unless his new job was "minimally attached or part-time for economic reasons." U-6 does not, generally, include people who got a new job for lower pay.

Re: Private sector lost 33k jobs, badly missing expectations of 100k increase

#60

Post by ajmurmann »

loudmax wrote: post #51
ajmurmann wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, wut? Any system that's been working better in practice? There are small outlier countries like Singapore that have extremely well but at scale democratic countries have greatly outperformed other systems

There's the problem of scale, and also of duration. Let's say Lee Kuan Yew genuinely wants what's best for Singapore as a whole. How do you ensure that the next autocrat will be equally benign?

This is the exact issue. There is a lot more variance in autocrats. You can get Lee Kuan Yew and you can get Kaiser Wilhelm. With democracy you are much more likely to get something in the middle. In the end of the day the cost of an bad autocrat is higher than the opportunity cost of a milk toast government compared to Lee Kuan Yew. China is still catching up from the Mao years.

I do work that social media will change this though

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