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Something Strange Is Going On With Nonfarm Payrolls
Let's start with the basics: why is there a majority consensus that the Fed will hike rates after it removes its "patient" language tomorrow? One simple reason: non-farm payrolls. As reported earlier in the month, following the report of March's expectations smashing 295,000 jobs added, there have now been a 13 consecutive months of 200K+ payroll months...

... something which together with the 5.5% unemployment rate, is for the Fed is a clear indication that the slack in the labor is about to disappear and wages are set to surge.
Sadly, as we showed before, wages are not only not rising, but for 80% of the population they are once again sliding.
Falling wages aside (a critical topic as it singlehandedly refutes the Fed's bedrock thesis of no slack in a labor force in which there are 93 million Americans who no longer participate in the job market) going back to the original topic of which economic factors are prompting the Fed to assume there is an economic recovery, without exaggeration, all alone.
Is there nothing else that can validate the Fed's rate hike hypothesis? Well... no.
Below is a selection of the economic data points that have missed expectations in just the past month.
MISSES
- Personal Spending
- Construction Spending
- ISM New York
- Factory Orders
- Ward's Domestic Vehicle Sales
- ADP Employment
- Challenger Job Cuts
- Initial Jobless Claims
- Nonfarm Productivity
- Trade Balance
- Unemployment Rate
- Labor Market Conditions Index
- NFIB Small Business Optimism
- Wholesale Inventories
- Wholesale Sales
- IBD Economic Optimism
- Mortgage Apps
- Retail Sales
- Bloomberg Consumer Comfort
- Business Inventories
- UMich Consumer Sentiment
- Empire Manufacturing
- NAHB Homebuilder Confidence
- Housing Starts
- Building Permits
- PPI
- Industrial Production
- Capacity Utilization
- Manufacturing Production
- Dallas Fed
- Chicago Fed NAI
- Existing Home Sales
- Consumer Confidence
- Richmond Fed
- Personal Consumption
- ISM Milwaukee
- Chicago PMI
- Pending Home Sales
- Personal Income
- Personal Spending
- Construction Spending
- ISM Manufacturing
- Atlanta Fed GDPNow
So a pattern emerges: we have an economy in which jobs and only jobs are acting as if there is a strong recovery, while everything else is sliding, disappointing economists, and in fact hinting at another contraction (whatever you do, don't look at the Fed's internal model of Q1 GDP).
To be sure, economists these days are better known as weathermen, and so they are quick to blame every economic disappointment on the weather. Because, you see, they were unaware it was snowing outside when they provided their forecasts about the future, a future which should be impacted by the snowfall that day, and which they promptly scapegoat as the reason for their cluelessness. Yet one wonders: why didn't the harsh snow (in the winter) pound February jobs as well? Recall last year's payroll disappointments were immediately blamed on the weather which was just as "harsh" as this year. Why the difference?
And yet, today this rising "anomaly" between Nonfarm Payolls "data" and everything else, hit a crescendo, and some - such as Jim Bianco - have had it with the lies anomalies, which prompted him to ask the following:
Why Are Construction Jobs and Housing Starts Telling Different Stories? Is The Problem Non-Farm Payrolls
Bloomberg.com – Housing Starts Plunge by the Most in Four Years
Housing starts slumped in February by the most in four years as bad winter weather in parts of the U.S. prevented builders from initiating new projects. Work began on 897,000 houses at an annualized rate, down 17 percent from January and the fewest in a year, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday in Washington. The median estimate of 80 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 1.04 million. “It was just the weather, basically,” said Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial Corp. in Birmingham, Alabama. Still, “my view of the recovery in single-family housing is that it’s coming more gradually than others think.”
Comment
The red line above shows seasonally adjusted housing starts for February plunged by one of the largest amounts in the post-crisis period.
The chart below shows a subset of the February non-farm payroll report, residential construction jobs. Seasonally adjusted these jobs increased by 17,200 in February, the most in two years (Feb 2013 was greater) and the second most in four years.
The vast majority of residential construction jobs are due to new housing starts. Existing housing does not create a lot of construction jobs. So while economists are blaming the weather for the plunge in housing starts, residential construction jobs were fairly robust in February. This makes no sense.
Could remodeling have accounted for this discrepancy? Was there a big rush to redo kitchens in February? In Home Depot’s February 24 investor conference call, they made no mention of an unusual or a big increase in remodeling. Remodeling is so important to Home Depot that they partnered with Harvard University to create an economic series to help track sales (noted in the conference call).
If remodeling was not responsible for this discrepancy, we are left with a theme we have brought up on multiple occasions over the past few weeks. Payrolls data continues to paint a rosy picture of the economy while the rest of the economic data is doing quite the opposite.
Economists seem to start with the premise that the non-farm payroll data is correct and everything else needs to be dismissed by weather and other factors. Maybe we should ask why the non-farm payrolls number is different from everything else.
* * *
Here is another way of seeing the above "anomaly":
So, instead of asking why everything else is showing an abnormal - and rapid - slowdown in the US economy (and blaming everything on snow) is it about time that everyone - the Fed included - finally asks: just what is going on with the "data" that is reported every month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics?
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Sum Ting Wong!
funny shit .....like this is special with all the other complete bullshit they're pumping???
FEMA camp construction
Why does this discussion sound so much like the one about Rig Count and oil production?
Stop trying to use these numbers like they represent fact or reality. They do not and they never have. They are for visual reference only, comparable to nothing but themselves and sometimes not even then.
Sincerely,
NoDebt (An economist, but the good kind, not the kind you're thinking of)
There was a post here on ZH last week which pointed out that 84% of workers in the O&G industry are classified as independent contractors (based on a UC Berkeley academic paper). I would imagine a lot of workers in the construction industry are also self-employed. The NFP data does not track self-employed workers (an increasingly large part of our the workforce), so these lost jobs are not being captured by the official BEA reports.
But the question is more about the job gains in construction - not lack of job losses.
Good catch. I just skimmed the article, so I clearly missed the point. I don't have a good explanation for the construction job gains, other than the thought that somebody somewhere is making shit up!
I thought unemployment is an economic trailing indicator, not a leading indicator?
For what these PMIs are good for, if unemployment shows the future and not the past?
Ding Ding Ding... We have a winnah!!!
All this tells you is they still have some work to do getting their stories straight.
Even FEMA camps need material to build and supply. Somewhere the supply chain would show a blip.
Why the fuck does ZH keep trying to interject reason or analysis into a
construct that is a fraud?
Just sell anything of tangible, actual value, and buy as many electronic stawk certificates as you can, as fast as you are able to.
The financialization of USSA's fraudconomy must go on, Comrades.
FFS.
ZH is controlled opposition.
Roll with it.
I tend to disagree with you. It is because of sites like this that I have done everything possible to detach and disrupt the system as much as possible. It has allowed me more financial freedom than any talking head on MSNBC...
And your IP address has probably been noted and listed.
I don't care either :)
also agree. ZH is very fair in their comment moderation and article presentation.
There is a lot of truth presented here....enough so that the matrix tards even if they are a little bit curious can dig themselves out of the well of lies they're living in.
'Why the fuck does ZH keep trying to interject reason or analysis into a
construct that is a fraud?'
fraud, the new truth
Freedom is Slavery, War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength.
Because the point of the blog is to coninue to pump out commentary with substance that relates to the theme of the blog. I personally like the continued validation of the ponzi/fraud/fiat scheme presented here.
It's a bitch keeping all those lies straight.........
When you done nothing but tell the same lie over and over, eventually you'll forget it's a lie. See: Brian Williams
I think I saw Brian on the links last weekend.
Early retirement sounds like a good deal if you can get it.
Or alternatively, see: WMD
Of course, when you lie about a personal experience, you're fired.
When you lie and get a million plus people killed, nobody loses their job.
Only jobs increasing are the ones Bill is getting from the new intern.
They can't even keep track of their lies anymore,so how do you expect them to keep
track of employment ?
Having once worked at a UI local office (when they still existed, and UI is short for Unemployment Insurance, philistine), the big concern for the senior manager there was trolling the Continued Claim section for her next girlfriend. Dykes aside, you should not put your faith in government numbers. The civil service drones who generate these numbers pass them on to empty suits who follow orders. IMHO, the government numbers are estimates, as accurate as the estimated utility bill Con Edison generates.
They are all black box numbers. Try to get the raw data and the algorithms including any correction factors and how they were derived. This is why sheep are important, they never ask where the numbers came from, they just smile and say "that's great". We keep hearing about what the Fed will do but they have become a slave to their own lies and they know what will happen when they have to keep their promises.
Why do my fudge brownies taste like fudge?
WTF did you put in them this time?
100 percent pure fudge concentrate.
20% more fudge than the leading brand. And far better-packed.
average hours worked rose thus allowing average weekly earnings to rise faster than hourly earnings. Hourly Wage X Hours Worked = Weekly Paycheck.
Don't try to make sense of it.
News to Bill Gates that all those billionaires can't pay for anything.
What's he know about truck driving or oil drilling or war fighting? How is that Washington State deficit doing again?
Where "residential" contruction job = "correctional facility" construction job.
Welcome to your new "residences," climate deniers!
Blame the unions.
They want too much money.
Blame the unions in the US for everything bad.
Then blame the nigs and spics.
It's all going according to plan.
LOLOL......................
Execute Order 66.
Good - Good
Based on today's numbers, "the unions" are mostly useless (or worse) government employees with multimillion dollar (equivalent) retirements waiting for them after 20 to 30 years of harassing the very people (tax payers) who pay their salaries.
In other news dictator Obama has declared Full Employment on his first trip to North Korea....says The New York Pravada Times.
It's so simple. All the newly-hired waiters are hiring their construction buddies to remodel all the restaurants and bars.
Disband the bartenders union.
Terminate the waitress union.
End the shoeshine unions.
They are being overpaid as it is.
As stated by then-candidate for Governor of Minnesota, Tom Emmer. Now he's the US Representative from MN-6, Michelle Bachmann's old district. I'm not sure exactly on whom the laugh is. That usually means it's on me.
Very true. That's why I shine my own shoes, tend my own bar, and wait my own tables.
Relative to the value of their labor, quite. But that hardly makes them unique.
When the situation becomes serious..........
,,,you have to find a bagholder or two and get the fuck out of Dodge.
They need to buy my new product, the Unified Data Distortion Warehouse (UDDW), which assists in aggregating data across many disparate departments and "massages" data uniformly so that these embarrassing situations don't occur. Call me, Janet.
Wow, talk about employment security! You'll be busy til the end of days!
Didn't Obama just legalize 9 million people? Perhaps they are counting their IRS retroactive rebates as jobs.
Well, at least "bullshit" has never been doing better.
There's no strong recovery in jobs - have you forgotten the 92M Americans out of work?
Those 92m are being offset by the 20m legal and illegal migrants.
Get with the program: they're not out of work, they just don't want to work -- so they're not counted. Hard to believe that one out of every two people aged 18-64 have no desire to work...
Jobs Galore. USA is back jack!
There could be major time lags between housing starts and housing completion. Lags like years. The definition of a "housing start" is a building permit and perhaps a few stakes hammered in the ground, or some trees clearcut. Remember, most builders don't actually complete a building until they sell a contract on it and collect most of the money. They don't even dig the hole for the foundation until a down payment is recieved. Nothing to see here, move along.
Wrong. Most builders have a core residual staff, and hire trades as site jobs start.
Those figures should be concurrent,there is no lag in construction.
Rubbish.
The average single family home takes 4 months to build, start to finish.
And these stats concern HOME STARTS, NOT PERMITS PULLED.
AND builders don't start construction of a home, then suspend it, without a roof, or other substructures, letting it fall into disrepair, until someone buys it (closes on it), and then finish it.
AND today, a higher % of housing starts are PRE-SOLD vs SPECS, as in the past.
Knock, knock
Ok, I'll bite....Who is there?
Rising rates.
Rising rates who?
Nobody is. NIRP bitches!
Where have all the Chinese and institutional buyers have gone?
Citizens riot after ANOTHER drunk Ukraine soldier has accident in a tank, kills young girl
lots of companies in the construction business were independent contractors now with so many out of business folks have to hire employees to do what the independent contractors did. Just one possible expaination. Just remember the independent contractos usually do not get unemployment or count as lost jobs when they go out. Thats a big hole in the jobs number and another reason for the participation rate plunge.
They are just adding in the now legal construction workers that were formally working off the books. No new jobs created, they can just count them now. Just my guess, otherwise it's just the usual bs.
throw in another series on energy sector jobs
or greenspan is correct--worker productivity in US is declining--more employees, less work.
iPhone wins again! Can't wait to see what the productivity will be when they all lever up their HELOCs to buy the Apple Watch. We used to while away the hours playing Farmville, now its Twitter, Tumblr, Vine...
The iWatch has an app that let's you 3D build a single family home with worm hole materials transported from Planet Xylon.
Is it free or will I have to pay $1.99 for it? I'm not paying until I can at least try the free version.
The free version forces you to agree to let Apple sodomize your family.
meh... they'll probably do that to all of us anyway... eventually.
Read into it what you want.
I had a roof redone on a commercial remodel I'm doing. 3500 sq ft. About 5 layer of hot tar, 60 years old.
12 Hispanics where on the job at 7:00, the tear off and cleanup was finished by noon. The ISO ( insulation) was down by 1:30.
The tear off crew left about 2:00
Some were, I guess, only 16 or 17 years old. They are three levels below the guy I pay. Great job. Good price. Slave labor.
We are fucked.
It was the same argument before the civil war as today. We can't operate without the cheap labor. Bullshit. The average Native born can't compete against it, that's for sure.
And for those who don't know, that's the WHOLE construction industry now. And it's little by little creeping into the licencesd trades. Native born kids don't want to work with their hands, or at all. A Hispanic manages to get licensed, and the whole crew rolls that way.
Edit. I estimate 70-80% of Hispanic construction labor is " off the books" or being paid as Independant contractors. There is a whole industry in accounting to support the bullshit, trust me, I see it. And no one from .gov is checking.
You are correct NP.
The question is, if there are legalized, will they come above board and actually be employed properly or will those that do, be replaced by the next batch that will work off the books? Of course there would not be a next batch, if we would actually close the damn border! But that might actually help the middle class, and we can not have that, no how, no way.
Bureau of Lieing Scum.
"Department of USSR Comrade Employment Division."
it makes perfect sense when you come to the realization that every fucking thing the govt/banksters say is a lie
Sure it makes sense, all the numbers are fake just like everything else in the US, the food, the pride, etc.
My corned beef tastes like a rubber tire.
Stop storing excess oil in the food please.
What's a rubber tire taste like?
I got home, skipped lunch to chow down on c beef, cabbage and red potatoes.
The wife had the crock pot on warm.
I'm eating chicken.
It tastes like chicken.
Thomas Perez, the scandal-ridden Department of Justice.
Enough said
remember, the #1 reason to buy stocks is that they are going up and you have to buy stocks.
in the old days,revenues earnings growth and cash flows and valuations mattered. New products mattered
Seems 'normal' to me. They fudge data for their ends as usual. The real question is what are those ends now. This guy could have come here for the best answer.... THE FED is going to raise rate NO MATTER WHAT!! They have to for liquidity sake.
OR those jobs are people building fallout shelters
Yeah, no shit. Everything that comes out of the BLS is a pack of lies. Next topic.
Construction businesses are no longer investing in capital items such as Caterpillar excavators. They just employ fifty guys with shovels instead.
Why not five thousand with table spoons ?
Only 49 or else "you know what" has to be paid for by the business.
Yes, like in the Third World. It's easier and cheaper to hire 100 guys with shovels than to buy a CAT.
Excellent reasoning that US employment reports are suspect but I also suspect that all of us didn't need all this mega reasoning to know the BLS or, whatever these bureaucratic mice are called, that the non farm payroll reports are pure bullshit.
200% more renos as opposed to starting new.
As long as just one stud remains standing, it is not a "new house".
ZH better hope no one at the Fed reads or believes this article....otherwise the word "patience" stays in AND they might even consider firing up another round of QE.....which would mean one more year down the road before we start this whole thing all over again.
Payrolls are known to be a lagging indicator, mystery solved.
This country excels at disrespecting workers who perform work.
Employee is a 4 letter word to the investor class.
How did that happen?
That's an excellent point, and one I've been bothered by for years growing up poor. People would always tell me I just needed to work harder and it was my fault my parents were all screwed up, or at least for the results of that. And people's general attitude is that they are severely overworked, and everyone else is utterly lazy. The premise being that work is something anyone would wish to avoid at all cost. Last time I had a job, I had to deal with a female sales Exec who was a dreadful social climber. She spent months wheedling her pre-school kids into the "Right" pre-school, whatever the hell that might be. Soon after her triumph, she discovered that the plumber who installed all her custom Italian-marble sinks and toilets and shower stalls had his kids in the same "Right" pre-school. She was mortified, aghast and disgusted.
I got her pretty good on the way out the door though, so I'm fine with it.
Poked her in the whiskers, yeah?
Noticed the same growing up in the UK,many years ago.
That disdain seems to be an integral part of declining empires.
In simplistic terms, peeps get spoiled rotten.
Here's a new idea: We want just ONE report out from the government for us idiot sheep to digest. The two-part report goes like this:
STATUS OF UNITED STATES FINANCES AND STUFF
-------------------------------------------------------
1) All the positive stuff: UP
2) All the negative stuff: DOWN
END OF REPORT
I think even sheeple can understand that... enough of all this confusing spinning of numbers and whatnot. Just tell us what we want to hear. Then print more money.
When we don't count people without jobs as being unemployed, unemployment tends to go down. Instead let's only count those currently eligible for Unemployment. Similarly, we'll count as "jobs" only those requiring a W2, and never mind what numbers go on said W2. When 1 job becomes 2 or even 3, with combined compensation lower than the former 1, that's a "win" for employment.
There's nothing "strange" going on with the nonfarm payrolls, unless for some reason you consider fraud and deceit to be "strange." Which you shouldn't because then you'd be overlooking the only real growth industries currently operating in America.
Ok, I have experience on how the BLS bullshits its non-farm payroll numbers. So, this is how it roughly works:
1) Out of the "universe" of employers that pay unemployment insurance, a sample proportional to the weight of the different industries per state is taken,
2) Overpaid government employees that earn a little more than minimum wage (it varies by state, some states outsource this job) call the different business in the survey to check addresses and basic information,
3) They then send by Postal Service (!) the survey that asks: Number of employees, number of women employed, total production workers (if it's manufacturing) and total wages. The employer then answers the survey, monthly, over the course of two years. (Every quarter new employers are added to the sample and old employers are dropped)
4) Our overpaid government employees collect the data. If an employer doesn't answer, or if the overpaid government employee doesn't lift a finger to dial a number on the phone over the course of a week, the "economists" extrapolate the numbers from past data.
5) The "economists" then make sure the weights add up with the data collected on a bullshit software, and then send the numbers to Washington. The numbers are further revised by Washington.
6) Washington then publishes the data, revises last month's number, and then revises for one last time last year's number.
7) I don't know what voodoo Washington practices.
Gubbamint data are just liar produced lies.
Yellen reads that data and then bids the market.
Who cares what the facts are, this is the process until further notice.
And that 4.2T Fed balance sheet is likely over 10T - but since there's no audit, liar Yellen says 4.2T
You aren't kidding about the Fed balance sheet. In 2009 they made trillion dollar loans to single entities that never made it on their books. We didn't find out until afterwards. Even then, they never back corrected their books. And the idea that these loans ever got paid back is pure hilarity. The Fed balance sheet is easily 10T by now.
Re; just what is going on with the "data" that is reported every month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics?
One can assume that's a rhetorical question... Right?
How can you make more money with a flop than you could with a hit?
lies, all lies
more illegals getting work permits, doing the same job, but now reportable.
Could this be due to the "skyscraper index"?
I read somewhere that when economies are tanking, there's a sudden (counter intuitive) surge in highrise construction.
I can witness that here in Bumfuck (aka) downtown Montreal, there are no less than 10 large scale highrise construction sites going on. All of these projects will have BOTH office and residential units.
It just does'nt jive with the REAL economy, which is to say....no one can afford to buy or rent them (the apartments) because most jobs are in the $10-$14/hour range...anyway, it seems backassward to me !
So, if the same shit is going on in the USSA, could thatbe where the artificially inflated NFP #'s are coming from? Just sayin....
Naw, here in the US construction workers are now working 29.5 hours so that the employers don't have to pay Obamacare. Takes a lot more workers to do the job even with a collapsing housing market.
I don't understand all the fuss. This is just a big misunderstanding. My broker told me just to dollar cost average. Man, is he smart. If anyone would like his number I am happy to provide......
They are building like idiots here in FL. Huge number of foreclosures still in the pipe, along with several new ones. When you see the 3% down shit, you know the game is almost up...again. Energy sector drop is going to surprise alot of folks.
We are only halfway through March. I bet the Oil jobs report craters in the 1st Qtr--- unless they rig that stat as well.
Man, this is like the old USSR.
"State Organs today reported another month of 99% employment is the USSR!" says Pravda.
Illegal immigrants count in the employment report when they are hired but not when temporarily laid-off as they can't file for uninsurance.
5.5% Employment?
Who is dumb enough to believe that?
Bwahahaha!!
welcome to Home Depot.
I Love You
If construction jobs are so robust why are lumber orders crashing??? What are they building with stones?
The fudge in dim numbers stinks....
Like poo!
Wages are not falling...that's not what the 2nd chart shows.
Why did I bite?
Ok, I'll give it to you, anything off the bottom is an increase.
But the increase is decreasing, and at 1.5%, wages are barely keeping pace with inflation. Ergo, decreasing.
Are we going to accept the inflation numbers that come from the highly reliable source that gave up 5.5 % unemployment?
And the Little blue line moving down and right is decreasing.
Goal seeking two different numbers does not give you an Equal Sign.
It's that new guy Ted on the 3rd floor. Fucker still can't figure out the Etch-A-Sketch dials.
hey, they can digitally create and print the money. enough said.
Peak Data Fraud