This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
On those NFPs
I hate NFP Friday. The numbers are flakey.
There are about 130mm workers. This morning we hear that total jobs increased by 80K. The reported number represents a change of 0.06%. This extraordinarily precise estimate is made based on a survey of only 1/8% of households. The error rate on the calculation is easily +/-250,000. And don’t get me started on the Birth/Death calculation.
Social Security reports income from payroll taxes. The following looks at the September, October and November numbers for 2008 through 2011 (SSA has Nov. 11’ estimate out). You tell me if there is any evidence of improvement.
The three month totals reflect the YoY improvement. But consider the 08 - 11 comparison.
My conclusion looking at the NFP #s versus the SS data is that there may be some jobs being created. But they don’t pay very much. On the whole, we still have not caught up to where we were three years ago.
»
- advertisements -
They don't make jobs like the used to....remember the 50s,60s, and 70s when a guy with a High School education could easily land a job for life, raise a family without wife working, buy a house that always slowly went up in value so never underwater, get a new car every few years, have health coverage , retire to a nice pension, never worry about paying for his kids education.
Now that was a JOB.
A friend worked at IKEA part time for just a tich over min. wage to get health insurance while she did freelance graphic design work full time. Everyone she worked with at IKEA stocking shelves starting at 5am had at least two jobs. Several of them were former Nothwest airline (now delta) mechanics that lost their jobs when the airline busted their union. These people working for low wages, working early and late long hours (60+) to scratch together a living. They were hard working, good team members, not messed misfits, and yet the best they could do was a job paying $10 without insurance and a second job paying $8 an hour that paid for part of their insurance. This was before the recession
What about the payroll tax cut-- does this take that into account?
Not trying to be a smartass, just trying to see if they are apples to apples.
If it is then this is worse than I thought.
Are the social security revenue figures adjusted for inflation?
Nice analysis and good questions Bruce. Always enjoy your thoughts, especially on SS. Every economic statistic should have error bars associated with it. But the notion of uncertainty escapes the MSM. Unfortunately, it also eludes most scientists too.
If I flipped a coin five times and observed 5 heads would I be entitled to conclude the probability of heads is 1? Or should I conclude I have a biased coin? Actually neither is correct-I just didn't have a big enough sample set. This is the problem with most economic statistics, they are just to sparse to draw valid conclusions. Same goes with most price data. We're all fooled by randomness.
Why are you surprised that your analysis of absolute fucking bullshit equals absolute fucking bullshit? Statistics are the moral equivalent of a million accounting chimpanzees cooking the books for JP Morgan, or Goldman Sachs. Even a blind pig can find an acorn.
del
Pardon my first (edited away) question, I figured out which numbers you're using (OASI+DI, not counting self-employment or late payments for past quarters).
But anyway, these SSA numbers appear to me to be of dubious value for tracking employment and wage trends. Somehow, they show an increase in this year's receipts vs 2010, when in fact receipts are down, due to the payroll tax holiday.
But, but, the evidence of improvement? It's Obama: a new step in human evolution; homo sapiens superiorensis; hope & change and a post-partisan step forward to the shining city on the hill. Yes we can!
Bruce, can't you feel it , hear it? It's out there. You just need to reach a little harder, cleanse your mind and your eyes will see the promised land!
Believe and the data will follow, brother.
The BLS data is complete bullshit anyway. Rather than tallying up actual state unemployment claims - because, oh, noes! that would be too accurate - they commit the statistician's cardinal sin, by doing a *telephone* survey.
Let's be fair, Zack. It worked pretty well in predicting President Dewey's win over Truman..., oh wait.
Bruce,
Most of the time you are awesome.......the others just human I suppose. Good job.
Yeh ok, as per usual a interesting and micrometer analysis by Bruce. Congrats Dude.
But....there will be no green shoots until a wave of de-regualtion or a wave of Helicopter Ben's QE magic wand.
But then again "they" won't let Europe fail, and "they" won't let the ES drop to 1000...will they?
Jon Corzine made that bet, maybe a bit too big and too early....but he is going to jail ...right?
Amd & Cisco laying off, but high tech jobs will replace those industries we gave to China, or maybe not.
I think I'll start franchising a payday loan outfit that also buys scrap metal and blood plasma and sells liquor and precursors for methamphetimine and diapers.
Its the only growth industry i can see in this environment.
Make it into a church and you can be taxed at a lower rate, if at all.
I like it.
I'm torn between "Our lady of high interest" and "The light of the sad realization". Might have to use both so those who leave the flock have an alternative, albeit a co-opted alternative thats not really a choice at all. Kinda like our political system.
Christ's Church of Saint Christopher - nice ring, no?
Patron Saint of Lost Causes;)
Or perhaps, Church of the Gospel of Saint Thomas -
for all of us who doubt.
Church of the clutching sand.
Like grains of sand in the hourglass, so to pass the days of our lives.
Nice stain glass windows with a golden fist full of sand slowly falling and being carried away on the wind. A pulpit covered in sand with a couple of steer skulls and a broken lantern.
plasma "donation" in the basement, metal recycling in the junkyard/graveyard in the back. pay day loans in the confessionals, over priced decongestants, batteries, lye and diapers and soda in liter bottles available in the drive thru or in the mini market at every entrance and exit.
We've got a lotta 1st rate territories still available for franchise in the highest foreclosure disticts, but slots are limited and are only available on a cash down payment basis.
SEC says you can't consider this a prospectus, but your either a winner or a loser and all the winners are getting on the bus, so you better get a seat before the money bus leaves.
If you eliminate one $100,000 / year job while creating two $20,000 / year jobs, you have actually decreased the net purchasing power. While the number of unemployed is definitely a problem in the US, the larger problem is salary levels.
No. The owner gets to spend $60k more. But that fantisy world assumes a zero sum of money supply. lol. We know that is not true.
EDIT: your a socialist if you think a company should keep a $100k worker which could be replaced by 2 $20k workers.
you might want to put up revenues versus outlays. people who get SSN and receive Medicare for instance, when they receive a COLA, the Medicare payment almost always goes up. do they count that as SSN revenue? the recipient on Medicare never sees all their SSN COLA.
BUT BRUCE, THE DOW IS ALMOST BACK TO ALL TIME HIGHS!!!! SHIRLEY THINGS MUST FINE!!!!!!!!!!
kito you really need to do that with caps on next time.
Well they aren't, and stop calling me Shirley!
If a standard deviation is + 250,000 how is anything under that number worthy of reporting? That's not precision, that's throwing a dart at a board. Exclusion of people with no landlines from the basis set?
These statistics aren't only meant to lie, but to a greater extent confuse. We het caught up in the details and the train keeps heading towards the cliff. If people had any inkling of how this shit is manipulated they would be pissed.
Media is not about dissementating information or truth, it is managing expectations and maintaining the status quo. Numbers are made from whole cloth on demand to fit the moment. It has to be somewhat beleivable, enhanced by making the underlying acquistion and quantification sufficiently complex that most drones won't bother to inquire past the headline.
its a proven system that has worked for years, its got us into unpopular wars, allowed millions to steal trillions and sold countless numbers shit they don't need that they can't afford and don't really even want.
Its magic involving electronic witch doctors, humanities weak spot that has been preprogammed before civilization ever reared its ugly head.
The big lie writ larger, now with even more electrons. 2 scoops in every frame of video.
Aw, come on. You make it sound like a conspiracy to lie. That's not really the case--there's nothing but a conspiracy to make money selling advertising.
The fact that information reported in the media is sometimes untrue or misleading isn't a GOAL. That part's totally incidental to the business model. The goal is just the ad-revenue.
The untruths and/or misleading stories can just as easily be caused by incompetence and apathy as by someone *intentionally* making stuff up.
but it's MUCH more satisfying if they intentionally made it up.
Hey, whaddaya mean - based on this story sounds like they are all over the 'news':
http://news.yahoo.com/sources-reveal-details-cain-allegation-222800311.html
Another great comparison is the number of people on food stamps which reached record numbers in October. 46 million receive food stamp benefits, up 8.4% from 2010, up 1.2% from last month. UP ____% from 2008. How can the number of people on food stamps continue to increase materially while the government report GDP and employment growth. It doesn't add up. I believe the Government is over reporting employment growth through statistical games while it is impossible to underreport the number on food stamps.
A job that doesn't pay enough to live on equals people on food stamps and a job.
"A job that doesn't pay enough to live on equals people on food stamps and a job."
This is true. If you were a NASA engineer that now asks people if they "Want fries with that", as far as the Beltway Bozos are concerned it's Mission Accomplished!
Simplify that a bit, for the Beltway Bozos getting re-elected is Mission Accomplished. All else is incidental.
This extraordinarily precise estimate is made based on a survey of only 1/8% of households.
Who the hell would sit through this kind of survey and does it even reach people with no land line?
I've been around a fair bit and they've never talked to me or anyone I know.
I have a land line. I never registered with "no call list". I NEVER pick up the phone (thanks Tyler for that lesson) unless the ID is someone I want to talk to. Recently Gallup has been calling. I never pick up.
OT: Panisonic makes a helluva land line telephone which "speaks" It tells you in an audible voice who is calling. That invention is near the top of my list.
No cell phones. Another strike.
Bruce,
You will never make day shift supervisor at the BLS if you keep doing actual arithmetic with real data. That ain't what Alan G. used to do!
Mebbe some "hedonic improvements" or some such Orwellian confabulation of permutated number theory will give you "double-plus good" results. There's the shift differential you gotta make up, too; remember that!
As previously documented, lies, damn lies, and government statistics. Birth/Death, seasonal adjustment, margin of error.....what do you want the answer to be???????????
Thank God we're taking down the rest of the planet with us!
Bruce, does your graph account for the drop in the payroll tax rate?
good point.
Yes.
Even the September bar in that last graph is phony, isn't it Bruce? Didn't you point out in a previous column that September 2011 was a month with 5 Fridays and therefore one in which a lot of folks got 1 more paycheck than normal thus artificially boosting the September numbers.
The three months of data in the second graph smooths out the calendar irregularities.
Winning the Future ™
Can i buys tiger blood with food stamps? Where'd I put those green shoots anyways?
Data: garbage in, garbage out. Unfortunately the garbage man has been running late more often or not showing up at all. And big rats are starting to move into once pristine neighborhoods.
Your GIGO is so old fashioned. The new definition of GIGO is garbage in, gospel out.
Don't worry, next year the numbers will look better.
(humming some fucked up song about make believe, election years and unicorn shits)