As we head into tomorrow's all-important NFP print, that will make or break the next month's market action and political posturing, we thought it worth highlighting just how statistically farcical the accuracy bias is in this data. As we pointed out in January [6], this time of year is prone to extreme seasonal adjustments and moreover, this year has seen these adjustments breaking records in their relative scale. As TrimTabs notes the seasonal adjustment for February is likely to exceed 1.5 million jobs, which is many times greater than the job growth the BLS is trying to measure. They expect a 149k add, down from their 180k add forecast for January, which is well below the 210k consensus estimate but we note that the difference between the highest analyst estimate (+275k and no its not Joe LaVorgna) and the lowest (+125k) is entirely covered by a mere 10% disturbance in the BLS-'force' of adjustment. Critically, this means that whatever they need the number to be, it will be though we hesitantly point out the sad reality that while we have added jobs for 17 consecutive months (apparently), the average 133k addition is still insufficient to absorb all the new entrants to the labor force, suggesting the unemployment rate is likely to remain above 8%.
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Source: TrimTabs