At first glance, the numbers weren’t bad. Maybe even borderline OK. The headline payroll figure nearly doubled consensus estimates, even better when taking into account only private payrolls even after ADP earlier this week had reported the opposite. Topline, the Establishment Survey gained 379,000 in February 2021, of which 465,000 were reportedly added to the private economy (government employment shrank [...]
If the payroll numbers are old news because they aren’t supposed to matter anymore, what with TGA drawdowns and vaccines, then JOLTS figures one month further behind them must count for even less. Gradation does factor here, though, and that’s why it’s important to keep the current and slightly-in-arrears data in mind.What I mean is that the stimulus-frenzy narrative does [...]
The good news, such that it might be, is that the BLS - using data from the Census Bureau - believes that the American population is slowing down. According to the latest Civilian Non-institutional population estimates for January 2021, published alongside the current payroll report, the count was adjusted downward by around 400,000 consistent with the same kind and level [...]
ADP let the cat of the bag on Wednesday when the payroll processing provider announced it believed the level of private employment had declined in December 2020. Since it wasn’t likely to have been wildly inaccurate, it set the stage for a renewed negative number in the main government payroll report released today.According to those BLS’s Current Employment Statistics (CES), [...]
Bad news is good news? The payroll report for November 2020, like those of the previous four months, have only further corroborated and confirmed the untimely death of the recovery. Since actual recovery can take only a “V” shape, then the end of the “V” necessarily means the end of recovery.In the twisted world of mainstream assumptions, however, fret none. [...]
It has become our new weekly ritual, though I dearly wish it was anything but. The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration informs the country every Thursday just how many (or a reasonable approximation) of its citizens, formerly working, have filed for determination of unemployment insurance eligibility. Eight months after the initial eruption, we are nowhere near back to [...]
COVID-19 is a 2020 story and not so much one for 2021. Pretty much everyone, however, will be seeking to make it that way. To begin this week a stark reminder of that promise: vaccine-phoria. While that unleashed a curiously narrow risk and reflation frenzy, the fact that it wasn’t more widespread speaks to this disparity.A vaccine doesn’t really change [...]
The primary reason for that first rate hike in a decade in December 2015 was ferbus figuring that full employment had probably been reached, certainly close to where the unemployment rate had fallen at that time. The Fed’s main econometric model calculated this key economic level at between 4.8% and 5.0% unemployment; the actual rate for that month hit five [...]
The Department of Labor attached a technical note to its weekly report on unemployment claims. The state of California has announced that it is suspending the processing of initial claims filed by (former) workers in that state. Government officials have decided to pause their efforts for two weeks so as to try and sort out what “might” be widespread fraud.The [...]
The BLS’s payroll report draws most of the mainstream attention, with the exception of the unemployment rate (especially these days). The government designates the former as the Current Employment Statistics (CES) series, and it intends to measure factors like payrolls (obviously), wages, and earnings from the perspective of the employers, or establishments. The Establishment Survey.Its cousin is called the Household [...]
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