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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

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on the US tariffs thing, congress can put Trump back in his box and revert to normalcy any time it wants to We’ve already lost export market share. China, Russia and India have already begun building a trade bloc. FDI has already been trashed. We’re already in for a world of hurt. And personally, I’m eager to ensure it lands disproportionately on his voters and donors.

I think it's likely that if there was a rapid reversal, with Congress taking away the power to mess with tariffs and making it clear that it was permanently gone, there'd be some damage, but things would largely go back to normal. Not enough time has really passed for things to change _that_ much; many of the tariffs aren't _actually_ in place yet.

The world has seen how unreliable the US is. Its not even just the tarrifs, its the tarrifs applied at random, based on how happy the Don is. The world has seen the "checks and balances" don't exist, a populist leader can do whatever they want for any reason and has no accountability.

The horse has bolted, you can't ctrl-z this.

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

#252
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…

The good news is that these economic problems are entirely the result of bad policies and can be reversed. If we were to also raise broad based taxes, it would allow the Fed to cut interest rates, stoking long term investment, loosen up the housing market (which would allow more people to move), lower the Federal deficit, and improve the trade balance (as if that actually mattered).

> If we were to also raise broad based taxes

Tariffs affect households unevenly [0], but I think it would be fair to characterize them as broad based taxes.

[0] Some good info here: https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-septemb...

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

#253
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's like in my country, it's probably because you have more and more people "self-employed", and the average "small business" went down from 3.8 employees to 2.2 over the last 6 years (made up numbers, but i've read it almost halved which caused a lot of issues). I think we created a new status for Uber/Deliveroo and other workers to put them out of the category three years ago and it fixed a lot of our employmen…

You seem to be under the impression that these figures are exclusively sourced from employers, but they are not. They are sourced in part from a survey of 60,000 households every month, where each household in the the survey for several consecutive months. Here is some information about non-response rate: https://www.bls.gov/cps/methods/response_rates.htm

> You seem to be under the impression that these figures are exclusively sourced from employers, but they are not. They are sourced in part from a survey of 60,000 households every month, where each household in the the survey for several consecutive months

These are two separate metrics, they measure different things, and the figures often differ (unsurprisingly).

The BLS "establishment" survey (aka Current Employment Statistics, CES) surveys 120k+ businesses and government agencies, it measures jobs (not people), counting the number of payroll positions. This is "non-farm payroll employment", excluding the self-employed, farm workers, and private household workers.

The BLS "household" survey (aka Current Population Survey, CPS) surveys ~60k households, measuring individuals, whether they are employed, unemployed, or not in the labour force. These data are used to calculate the unemployment rate and labour force participation. This includes farm workers, the self-employed, and domestic workers.

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

#254
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…

Last administration cooked the books on BLS numbers for nearly 2 years, issuing corrections and all that nobody paid attention to. They also redefined what a recession is during the last administration. Wasn't a news story then, but is now b/c trump.

Seems like Trump is doing just fine creating a recession on his own.

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

#256
The revisions cover March 2024 through March 2025. While his policies may deliver turmoil in the near future, I don’t understand why most of the discussion here is about Trump. Furthermore, these revisions are at the high end of estimates, so it’s not a complete shock. The Fed and financial institutions must have already had an idea that the job market could be this bad.

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

#257
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least on the US tariffs thing, congress can put Trump back in his box and revert to normalcy any time it wants to; the threat of stagflation might make it do that. The previous stagflation incident was more driven by outside forces.

Don't worry. Congress will take back this power as soon as a Dem is in office.

Will there be another election?

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least on the US tariffs thing, congress can put Trump back in his box and revert to normalcy any time it wants to; the threat of stagflation might make it do that. The previous stagflation incident was more driven by outside forces.

> on the US tariffs thing, congress can put Trump back in his box and revert to normalcy any time it wants to We’ve already lost export market share. China, Russia and India have already begun building a trade bloc. FDI has already been trashed. We’re already in for a world of hurt. And personally, I’m eager to ensure it lands disproportionately on his voters and donors.

> We’ve already lost export market share.

Probably more importantly, the US has lost trust.

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

#259
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Real assets like precious metals, commodities, real estate should do well during stagflation. I think crypto (mainstream ones, not fringe) should be doing well too IMHO, despite the skeptics.

Why would real estate do well in a world of double digit interest rates?

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

#260
post #50

I think it's interesting that everyone's immediate reaction now-a-days is to assume incompetence or maliciousness, rather than curiosity at the root cause (very telling this attitude has even permeated a forum for supposed 'hackers'). A high-level is that 80% of the economy is very easy to track b/c it's not very volatile (teachers, for example). What we have seen is a huge surge in unpredictability in the most volat…

Explain to me please why job numbers aren’t simply a matter of querying the Federal social security database? A longstanding process of polling businesses for what they want to report, followed by corrections up to one year later, has got to be a pantomime to fudge the numbers.

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