Job growth revised down by 911,000 through March
Yeah that one may be on Biden but that's besides the point.
There's no longer any confidence in the BLS’s data that financial markets, businesses, policymakers, and families that rely on to make major decisions.....That's pretty clear.
As it seems to be completely broken, why not just stop reporting the bogus numbers till it's retooled.
They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Truth be told it looks like the indexes have already baked "bogus" in and are going about their day.
The trouble is with the fed who often cites the (pre-revision) bogus numbers as a reason not to lower interest rates.
--sigh--
I don't know how many times I have to explain this. The preliminary numbers from the BLS are based on two surveys. The first, the Household survey. Mailed to selected households, it asks a series of questions concerning employment status, and actually asks a question about citizenship status. Comically, Noem used the results of that report last month to claim over two million citizens have taken jobs that used to be held by non-citizen immigrants. Actually statistically impossible. Like one analyst put it, it is as if over a million babies were born being 16.
The second survey is the establishment survey, mailed to businesses, it asks questions about number of employees, planned future employment, and others. Since Covid the response rate to this survey has completely tanked. That is called non-participation bias, it is a well known bias within statistical analysis. The Biden administration sought to address this problem of lack of participation by creating a committee tasked with increasing the participation. Granted, the committee was unpaid volunteers with statistical expertise. I would have went with marketing and sales experts, after all, the problem is not in statistics, the problem is in selling participation.
In February, Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, and like almost all of Trump's cabinet, a complete and total moron, disbanded that committee claiming we didn't need it anymore. Since then, the problem has only gotten worse and now, with ICE actions, the household survey is completely meaningless as well.
You are correct. The market now totally ignores the preliminary numbers. The professionals, and I include myself in that group, know what is really happening. Those preliminary numbers are meaningless. And I agree, no need to report those numbers until they are verified with real data, not some damn survey response answers. But now, to interest rates.
Look, this is not the time for the Fed to cut interest rates. The Fed is tasked with controlling inflation and maximizing employment. A pretty damn tough task that revolves around one thing, the Philip's curve. While inflation, at the moment, is tolerable, if you are on the ground, if you see things like I do, it is starting to heat up. Like a sprinter coming out of the blocks, we are barely ten yards in on a hundred meter dash. The Trump tariffs have only begun to have an impact. But already, both companies and households are making adjustments.
But if the Fed cuts interest rates the dollar is only going to continue to fall. And while that may bode well for exports, it absolutely contributes to inflation for the consumer. And the Fed doesn't see that, it is not a component of the Philip's curve. If the Fed cuts the interest rate I will short the hell out of the market. My clients, I will advise them to get out, go to cash, because the crash will come. And I have been doing this for thirty years, my record is impressive. I don't miss.
