You would think that if economists and policymakers were actually confident in the recovery idea that they would be mostly unbothered by monthly variation. Even in the most robust of periods there are no straight lines, and even the strongest job markets (the real ones that don’t need narratives) take a break now and again. Judging by reactions today to [...]
I think it pretty clear after examining the rest of the labor market that the pop in JOLTS estimation of job openings fits well within the idea of statistical problems. This is wholly unsurprising given that JOLTS is directly tied into the BLS’ Current Employment Situation report, meaning that part of the Establishment Survey forms the basis for the calculation [...]
With all due respect to durable goods, perhaps I was a bit too hasty in assigning it the moniker of most boring. There is certainly competition now, as the monthly payroll euphoria has become just as homogenous, curiously, and engrained enough where commentary can simply be copied and pasted from month-to-month. Most people probably will not recall that such regularity [...]
When the BLS’s Employment Cost Index fell to a two-year low last quarter (Q1 ’14) there were no expressions of fear over “deflation” or that the economy was growing weaker, instead mostly mentioning the intended aberration of supposedly everything. There were, in fact, very few pronouncements at all at the time. Yet, what a difference a return to trend makes. [...]
There are a few more pieces of economic accounts to put together before the disaster of a first quarter can be left behind (if only until the next set of revisions). A major part of the economic picture is derived from productivity, as that feature defines sustainability and ties together labor growth with productive investment. Capitalism is the combination of [...]
I spend a lot of my time analyzing these various economic accounts with the idea of flawed statistical inference never far out of awareness. The government agencies themselves spend a great deal of their effort in the same way. Ever since these accounts were “converted” to probability models, statistics is an important part of the “reliability” factor that nobody actually [...]
Since there exists more than a bit of doubt about the state of employment in the United States, at least outside mainstream commentary, that dissatisfaction with the BLS/Census Bureau leads observers and analysts toward other data sources. When speaking of jobs you would think it far more readily obtainable, particularly without the need to resort to statistical trend analysis with [...]
Before getting into the details of the monthly payroll frenzy, the idea of a “strong” jobs report needs to be addressed. The headline for ABC News was, Stocks Are Mixed Despite Strong US Jobs Report, while Forex News topline said, US Dollar Firms after Strong Jobs Report. As if each media outlet were simply copying from each other, everywhere you [...]
The term discontinuity is probably unfamiliar to the casual observer of economic accounts, but they are quite regular features in almost all the statistical data series. It goes with the territory, as statistical estimates themselves vary in depth and “quality.” For example, when the Census Bureau updates its population estimates to incorporate fuller or “better” samples or sample sizes, it [...]
The official unemployment rate has been moving downward almost exclusively as the labor force shrinks so dramatically in proportion to the population. That wasn’t the intent for the design of the statistic, but the state of economic commentary being what it is has left most observers to draw their own conclusions (I think most unbiased people understand what is going [...]
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