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U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier

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Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier

#101

Post by coldpie »

StillBored wrote: post #62

Austerity has repeatably been shown to kill economic growth and trigger recessions/depressions. Yet for whatever reason there is one party in congress who's entire economic policy is basically austerity measures. Repeatedly, the ax man comes in and cuts spending that generates multiples of economic activity in return. This happens all the time cut a $1 here and it costs $4 over there kinds of things. Infrastructure i…

> This happens all the time cut a $1 here and it costs $4 over there

The thing that makes these policies work, of course, is the $1 is cut from a billionaire's taxes, and the $4 is paid by the rest of us. Voters seem to like this policy, for reasons that are beyond me.

Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier

#103

Post by Hamuko »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #91
logifail wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be good for everyone if people who are not professional economists paid less attention to this. It would be good for everyone if the BLS figures were trusted. Even "not professional economists" might lose trust in figures which are regularly revised downwards ... months after being published.

They're preliminary figures! The only alternative is for BLS to be less transparent, collecting data and then refusing to release it until they have enough information to construct their final estimate.

I feel like there's a real alternative in changing your methology for estimating job creation, especially as survey response rates continue to fall.

Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier

#104

Post by kgermino »

logifail wrote: post #79
georgeecollins wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The department of labor has a methodology that gives an early number that tends to get revised. They have been doing it the same way for a long time and it would not be controversial, except the business press with too little news to report makes a big deal about it with very little context. So its, like jobs increased 200k (not saying +/- 200k is the error bar). It would be good for everyone if people who are not pr…

> It would be good for everyone if people who are not professional economists paid less attention to this. It would be good for everyone if the BLS figures were trusted. Even "not professional economists" might lose trust in figures which are regularly revised downwards ... months after being published.

they're regularly revised up or down because they're (very openly) preliminary numbers released just days after the month ends and before many employers have even answered the survey. When the economy reaches an inflection point they tend to be streaky (multiple revisions down or up in a row) but that's nothing new and mostly just means that the economy has been getting worse over the last year and a half, which... that's one of the big arguments for Trump's victory so I'm not sure why it would be a surprise.

Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier

#105

Post by soperj »

palmfacehn wrote: post #81
soperj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because they're asked to always have rosier numbers. They've done this forever.

And it is telling that a certain flavor of partisan is finds it novel. "No Matter Who Is President, Don’t Trust Government Data" >There isn’t clear, undeniable evidence that officials at the BLS are editing or making up the jobs numbers that go out to the public. But it’s easy to see why people think that they are when you look back at the series of dramatic downward revisions the Bureau has made in recent years—espe…

They do it in Canada too, so much so, that people have gone on to call it a random number generator. I've never seen it revised upwards.

Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier

#106

Post by albumen »

logifail wrote: post #79
georgeecollins wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The department of labor has a methodology that gives an early number that tends to get revised. They have been doing it the same way for a long time and it would not be controversial, except the business press with too little news to report makes a big deal about it with very little context. So its, like jobs increased 200k (not saying +/- 200k is the error bar). It would be good for everyone if people who are not pr…

> It would be good for everyone if people who are not professional economists paid less attention to this. It would be good for everyone if the BLS figures were trusted. Even "not professional economists" might lose trust in figures which are regularly revised downwards ... months after being published.

As posted just a few posts above yours, this link provides some helpful factual reference: https://www.statista.com/chart/34931/difference-between-prel...

Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier

#108

Post by babblingdweeb »

logifail wrote: post #79
georgeecollins wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The department of labor has a methodology that gives an early number that tends to get revised. They have been doing it the same way for a long time and it would not be controversial, except the business press with too little news to report makes a big deal about it with very little context. So its, like jobs increased 200k (not saying +/- 200k is the error bar). It would be good for everyone if people who are not pr…

> It would be good for everyone if people who are not professional economists paid less attention to this. It would be good for everyone if the BLS figures were trusted. Even "not professional economists" might lose trust in figures which are regularly revised downwards ... months after being published.

Trust in the numbers is extremely important and we should all be calling out that we need to trust the numbers and the methodology. It should also be transparent.

However, it's extremely common in forecasting to revise the forecast once actuals come in. In the case of the BLS, it's the documented approach for a very long time.

Every month the numbers are adjusted and annually. All of the notes as to why, the method, etc are in the actual reports*.

*I don't recommend reading them or the footnotes unless you have insomnia. :)

** Also, if the source data is inaccurate, corrupted, etc; if the models are non-transparently adjusted, that would be horrible and cause for alarm. At the moment, we don't know if that is the case. Yet.

Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier

#109

Post by yepitwas »

nodesocket wrote: post #94
putzdown wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see the evidence for or against this assertion. If BLS is grossly inaccurate, that'd be a good thing to know. If it's accurate, also good to know. Evidence?

We can start with this reading. Average monthly job growth dropped from 147,000 initially to just over 70,000 a reduction of approximately 52% from their data. This at precisely when the Fed needed to start cuts when the administration has been aggressively hammering them. Hopefully the Fed is not too late this time, and their 6+ month delay cutting won't result in a recession or serious economic impact.

I expect they're correctly hesitant to cut rates at the same time as the president pursues inflationary policies, since that'd be courting stagflation, which was so bad last time it happened that it was one of the main factors that defined our politics for the following three decades.

Re: U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier

#110

Post by VoidWarranty »

cs702 wrote: post #53

If unemployment continues to rise, and the one-time impact on prices of tariffs leads to self-reinforcing high inflation, we'll have stagflation : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation I sure hope not , because stagflation would be extremely unpleasant for everyone. Central banks like the Federal Reserve would be forced to raise interest rates, to put stress on businesses and consumers, so businesses find themsel…

So uh, I'm the first person in my family to break the cycle of poverty. I have nobody I trust to follow advise with money. I do all the 'standard' boring investment strategies (401, index funds, roth, etc). I don't bother with crypto (scams). What does one do if stagflation is coming? Float more cash? Buy real estate?
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