Via the miracle of Bloomberg, we can back out of the NFP data the B/D adjustment
By that metric, today’s number was actually very weak compared to other Payroll numbers
Note: As previously mentioned, the B/D is not a one for one additor to the NFP data. It goes into the total employment data, which is then seasonally adjusted, before a monthly gain/loss is made.
The greater impact of B/D is on the total annual jobs created, and not the monthly numbers.
Why don’t you take out the seasonal adjustment as well? Then the numbers won’t look so bad.
Either way it’s the lowest point dating back to 2002. That’s pretty bad…
Note how this chart shows all of the various spikes and valleys —
November/December pre retail holiday hiring has the biggest spike, and the post Xmas layoffs in January is the deepest valley.
If you wanted to, you could either smooth it and/or seasonally adjust it.
Meanwhile, here is the actual data.
I don’t understand then why institutions are buying these #s and buying stocks. It seems that our whole economic system, financial system, and gov. are colluding on a GIANT scam!
Of all the comments today, news releases, I think the FEd opening up the TAF to additional collateral, such as …. credit cards.. was the most structurally important. Picked up this comment I thought was quite telling from the tickerforum.
“I found the action of Gold and Oil after the Fed announcement to be telling this morning. The “long dollar / short commodity” meme that was supposed to happen intermediate term suddenly was off. Something did not go as planned today, although it took the dummy equity markets a few hours to figure it out.
My guess? The folks that trade this stuff may have picked up the first scent of a Fed balance sheet contamination. Yeah, the dollar rallied vs other fiat currencies, but hard assets were having none of this “dollar strength” BS.
This was a BIG move by the Fed today. Taking all classes of assets now onto the balance sheet and increasing the TAF by 50%?! These people are completely out of control.
”
In the end the chickens will come home to roost. Just ask Cramer,his company’s stock (TSCM)has lost 1/3 of its value in the last 5 days. HAH…. don’t sell BEAR. Buy the street.com….HAAAAH
If you take out the seasonal adjustments then December and January are always awful. My question is whether they took the numbers and just subtracted out the adjustment from the seasonal numbers or if they took them out of the non-seasonally adjusted and then reseasonalized them. That would be interesting.
Stuart,
Excellent point. I believe it was S%P who recently estimated the recovery rates on AAA, AA and A paper. It wasn’t pretty and the FED gets to collect?
Fed’s balance sheet is starting to look like a salvage yard with a big fence around it.
If this is your average slow-down, perhaps we are closer to a bottom then?
And if this is a deflationary or a stagflationary recission — jobs may follow asset prices as deleveraging continues and job losses follow Unless of course fed takes on all asset backed debt in their books which means higher interest rate and/or a falling dollar trend likely to continue?!
I guess market will continue to alter between Euphoria and Panic then…
OT: RUN, don’t walk, to read Lee Adler’s latest:
http://wallstreetexaminer.com/?p=2633#more-2633
I have a problem…anyone point me to a website where I might be able to estimate CPI over the next 10 years?
It might work better to work with the non-seasonally adjusted change, back out birth death, then re-seasonalize — I’m not perfectly certain how they seasonalize, but I bet it is written out somewhere — but the 12 month moving average for seasonalized and non-seasonalized are the same.
Something that can be done using the BB XL API, and Excel, but not simply. If I get time, I’ll give it a try, and then post it over at Aleph Blog.
Now we know why the TAF was increased 50% this morning . CFC just downgraded to BB+ and the Fed was sitting with about $40B of CFC junk on its books, via the TAF. Now it probably all has to be putback….uh-oh.
I would like to see economic data reporting removed from the government and contracted to the private sector – possibly the economic department of several non-partisan universities. A current example is the U of Michigan consumer confidence survey.
Not just data collection and running the numbers but the methodology used as well. As far removed from political pressure as humanly possible should be the goal. Then perhaps we can believe the results – we sure can’t now.
Jim
What a Killjoy – next you’ll be pointing out that if you subtract Shadow Stats inflation numbers S&P 1Q earnings are negative even ex financials.
Dear Barry:
I am a silent visitor/admirer of your TBP. Have not posted a comment yet. But, I find it valuable.
However, it is important that we do not commit the same mistakes as we accuse the government of, even inadvertently.
First, given that the birth/death adjustment is done at the NSA level, it is not correct to subtract it from NFP TCH in Bloomberg which is a SA figure.
The only way is to get from BLS the NSA Total Payroll figure without birth/death adjustment and show the difference that it has contributed to inflating the NSA payroll.
For now, we need to content ourselves with just pointing out the anomaly of jobs being added in construction and financial services under the Birth/Death calculations.
Second, under http://www.shadowstats.com, the CPI inflation figures appear too similar to the official CPI estimate with some 2% or 3% or 4% just added to the officially reported inflation. The wiggles are otherwise identical. That is a bit odd.
Wolfgang Muenchau, FT columnist (www.eurointelligence.com) first raised this suspicion.
So, one needs to make sure that true measures of CPI do not lie too!