>>/160543/, >>/160544/
- because NFP is a survey, it tries to account for gains/losses from businesses who opened/closed (aka birth-death). so BLS adds this adjustment in the birth-death bad math
- the math behind this is simplistic and is weighed based on older data (moving average regression)
- if you compare Q1 2025 to Q2 2023 (when peak fed rates hit) there are now more quarterly job losses than gains from birth-death (-150,000 vs +500,000 then)
- the overly optimistic B-D weighting from the past skews the real negative change today
how off is it?
- englander: "there's about a hundred thousand jobs a month that are ... basically just not there" and it swings +/- with the business cycle
- Bloomberg's @AnnaEconomist, @MishGEA, @MBjegovic, along w @EconguyRosie @DonMiami3 @profplum99 @onechancefreedm were some of the first to raise this flaw over the past couple years, in fact NFP was also undercounting jobs in 2022 during the boom
- @MishGEA mentions another wrinkle in auditing these numbers: the birth-death numbers are not seasonally adjusted, so it's hard to separate the B-D # from seasonal adjustment
- tl;dr the count is off and no one at BLS has seen The Wire
so what's actually accurate?
- the accurate numbers come from BLS's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) which pulls from state unemployment records, and covers over 95% of U.S. jobs
- englander: "QCEW is basically the universe, it's not a sample... it's very authoritative"
- but the problem is the long lag: 5-6 Months vs NFP's week
- englander also suggests looking at another BLS source: the prime Employment-Population Ratio (25-54 Yrs), it's a separate monthly survey of 60K households and has little revisions
how do we fix this?
- englander's main suggestion is stop B-D from using historical averaging and leverage incoming dynamic data more
- for example, linking it to general job creation "Let's assume that the job creation from new firms versus closed firms has some relationship to the job creation that we are seeing from continuing firms"
- my own take: fixing NFP's model makes sense, but QCEW shouldn't take half a year either. we have the tech to speed up state-level processing, or API integrations w payroll companies, or building private federal data hubs like @sriramk suggests
what's the outlook?
- NFA but englander views the near term as bullish, w rough employment the fed has no choice but to cut rates (prediction markets + i agree)
- intermediate term, there's a tough situation for the fed to navigate: lots of upward inflation pressure but also trying to preserve employment and prevent recession
- implied: if we see a boom from the Fed rate cuts or AI productivity, it'll take a while for it to show up in the numbers
https://x.com/0xAvious/status/1965156035762463118
Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו @netanyahu - Auto-translated from Hebrew by Grok
Important Update >>
https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1965111203841351960
Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson - Letitia James is cooked
She’s been exposed again for mortgage fraud with Citizens Bank in 2021, after allegedly misrepresenting her 5-unit Brooklyn building as a single-family home to secure a $200K credit line.
This allowed her to avoid higher commercial loan costs and interest rates.
Under NY Penal Law §187.20, loan fraud over $50K is Second-Degree Mortgage Fraud, a Class C felony carrying up to 15 years in prison.
https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1965053121211801702
Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson - Axios has found the true evil in the vicious murder of Iryna Zarutska by a black career criminal who has been released from jail 14 times by woke activist judges:
1. MAGA influencers who are “drawing repeated attention” on “Trump-friendly social media.”
2. The increased amount of security cameras in public spaces resulting in the video being too easily shared and “leaked.”
Insane.
https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1965041387386114196
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