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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

#231

Post by ikmckenz »

bilsbie wrote: post #68
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…

It sounds silly but we should take it one step further and look at life satisfaction. Who cares about jobs if people are unhappy? Stay at home parents could be way more valuable than more Wall Street jobs.

I would expect that data to be mostly noise though, after all, there is pretty strong evidence towards some soft form of "set point" level of happiness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

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

#232

Post by danans »

underlipton wrote: post #222
danans wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Unless workers unionize and demand higher wages. High-prestige work as an escape hatch from poverty has failed, and that may be a good thing. When people accept that dirty or "unskilled" labor has to be done, and that it deserves a living wage as much as any educated position, we'll be stronger as a country. Perhaps we'd even see, with the influx of people who haven't yet accepted being stuck in monotonous, menial la…

> Unless workers unionize and demand higher wages.

This is at odds with

> Perhaps we'd even see, with the influx of people

... because that influx of people will increase labor supply, lowering unions' bargaining ability. Unions primary leverage is their ability to withhold labor (AKA a strike).

> ... who haven't yet accepted being stuck in monotonous, menial labor and with an outsider's perspective, a renewed emphasis on bottom-up innovation and efficiency-creation.

Innovation and efficiency creation happen as the result of capital investment, via incentives to labor or by education, not as the result of hordes being forced into lower skilled labor at lower pay.

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

#234

Post by slashdev »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #192
llm_nerd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recent government payroll data has been hugely suspect. On the big release day the numbers are rosy and get reported to much hoopla and "told you" celebration, but then are subsequently revised downwards to little fanfare or notice. And for those who wonder "why revise downward if it's a lie?", because the numbers eventually are going to collide with reality so they need to be right sized after the fact.

> for those who wonder "why revise downward if it's a lie?", because the numbers eventually are going to collide with reality so they need to be right sized after the fact No, this is not the reason. The numbers that get fanfare are the preliminary BLS numbers. BLS collects data through surveys. Preliminary data are published with incomplete responses. As more employers respond, the numbers get updated. Guess which e…

The numbers have been so consistently wrong in the same direction. It could be that there are other things going on, but simply that volatile numbers come in later doesn’t seem to explain the bias.

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

#235

Post by toomuchtodo »

davidw wrote: post #216
SR2Z wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a software engineer starts working at Applebees, GDP will decrease. If lots of software engineers do it, GDP decreases more. If corporate revenue increases and is spent (as most revenue is), then the workers will be better off in the most bland "raising all boats" sense of the word - there will be more competition for their labor and more opportunities for them to jump ship. GDP gets a bad rap but if I had to pick…

I attended a talk by Alberto Alesina (RIP) a few years back and he made the point that, yeah, GDP isn't perfect, but by and large, people in countries with a high GDP are healthier and happier. It might not measure the difference between the US and France as well, but it's pretty good at pointing out that Sweden is doing better than Somalia.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-vs-happiness

https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction

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

#236

Post by jjtheblunt »

giantg2 wrote: post #145

I'm about to lose my job too. The job market looks terrible.

Don't lose hope; I left grad school right before the first dotcom failures 25ish years ago. I think you'll find that when some novel technology erupts onto the scene, the job market goes through a shift of semi incoherence, that hits folks like us.

but, it's temporary and can introduce a way more enthralling era of jobs.

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

#238

Post by standardUser »

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.

For that we have the Gini coefficient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

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

#239

Post by RayVR »

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…

BLS reports breakdown changes in employment by sector. This is obviously watched closely by investors.

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

#240

Post by daveguy »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #41
hliyan wrote: post #5

Important: "[payroll processing firm] ADP's report has a spotty track record on predicting the subsequent government jobs report"

ADP and BLS numbers are measuring different things. For people that care about these things, the nuances are well-understood. As a rough heuristic, ADP overfits to private sector jobs and BLS overfits to government jobs. There is a popular derivative heuristic that the economy is "good" when ADP > BLS.

> There is a popular derivative heuristic that the economy is "good" when ADP > BLS.

Surely that doesn't apply when both metrics are bad? I don't know. I'm not familiar with job reporting statistics. So info / perspective would be appreciated.

Also, when you say "over fits" I'm used to that in a machine learning context where it means data outside the fit is worse. Did you mean that ADP is more accurate with private sector and BLS is more accurate with public sector. Or is it more a matter of ADP comes in higher with private sector and BLS comes in higher with public sector. Usually, "overfit" is a bad thing in a machine learning context, but I wouldn't expect ADP to do worse in private and BLS to do worse in public. But the opposite. I would appreciate it if you could clarify the terminology from your perspective.

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