The U.S. job market turned weaker last month, dashing hopes for an economic rebound.
A report from the Labor Department on Friday shows employers cut 92,000 jobs in February, when economists had expected the U.S. would continue adding jobs, albeit at a sluggish pace. The unemployment rate inched up to 4.4%.
Job gains for December and January were also revised downward, with December now showing a net loss 17,000 jobs.
The weaker than expected jobs report comes as Americans are already anxious about the high cost of living. Those affordability concerns will likely be amplified as the war in Iran has triggered a sharp rise in energy prices. AAA reports the average price of gasoline jumped another 7 cents overnight, to $3.32 a gallon. That’s 21 cents higher than this time last year.
“unexpectedly”
Are there any more worries to be had? This only makes sense now if the top 10% is starting to worry about the top 1%. Most of us aren’t even in the game anymore (so let’s invent a new game that we can all play).
Unexpectedly?!
After the Great Financial Crisis it became clear to me that weasel word “economists” either have no idea what they’re doing, or don’t actually serve the public. These days I’m leaning more towards the latter.
Not to say that the greats like Adam Smith were unqualified. But the legion of yes-men who have been drinking corporate kool-aid since Nixon don’t work for us. Their job is to create a convincing narrative as to why it’s OK to have a visibly unhealthy economy.
Don’t trust unnamed “economists” in the news. Look for specific people who have predicted what the economy actually does, and listen to them.
Exactly what dumbass didn’t expect this? Oh Magats that’s right
If they had long term memory they’d be very upset right now.
2 days ago:
Employers added 63,000 jobs in February as the pace of job creation quickened and beat estimates, private payroll firm ADP said on Wednesday.
Economists had forecast a gain of 48,000 following January’s downwardly revised 11,000 increase – half the original estimate.
I expected that was all lies, so it’s still expected. Unless you believed the lies. But then that would be on you. I also expect that the job losses actually are well in excess of 100,000. There’s no way the administration would give anything but the flimsiest lowball number they think wouldn’t get called out immediately.
They’re not lies, they’re estimates based off of ADP statistics.
There’s 3 kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Our unemployment numbers are purposefully bullshit and have been for years too.
Do you have any sources for that? I’d love to read up on it.
Thank you! 🙏
The TL;DR version is that the unemployment numbers that tend to get reported are U-3, whereas many people think the U-6 numbers are a more accurate reflection of the real experience.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the most commonly reported rate in the United States, representing the number of unemployed people actively seeking a job. Meanwhile, the U-6 rate covers discouraged, underemployed, and unemployed workers in the country.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080415/true-unemployment-rate-u6-vs-u3.asp
Yes, their methodology. Exclusion of discouraged workers, part-time workers wanting full-time work, and strict “actively seeking work” definitions ensure the numbers don’t actually reflect the reality. But rather the more rosy fiction those in power wish to push.
So no resources that I can read?
Economists had forecast a gain of 48,000 following January’s downwardly revised 11,000 increase – half the original estimate.
That means the prediction was 22k new juobs, had just been decreased to 11k new jobs, and then shot up to 48k…
That’s not a sign that we should expect good things, that was a sign that someone may have caved from pressure after saying 11k.and went with a number that was obviously bullshit.
Apparently some people believed it tho, so I can admit when I’m wrong. I tend to overestimate people
Yeah, but the trend has been significant revision downward for months now. Anyone who’s been watching was expecting this.
Unexpectedly.
You know, there are reasons I’m not employed as an econometrician any more.
Like telling people things they don’t wanna hear.
I’m done with tables and numbers and statistical models now.
Memes will suffice.
Oh no I might black swan my pants.
Ok, fine, you got me, that’s ‘wrong’ but not ‘wrong’ in the way that I meant.
Here, uh… Arbys, KFC, or Wendys?
Or, or! We could have a Pentagon Pizza Party!
Those are always so much fun!
I’ll bite, what’s the black swan thingy and why is it wrong ?
Nassim Taleb popularized, in the mid to late 2000’s, the concept of an actually unforseeable risk, that there was absolutely no way to price in to any risking models, because it was a totally unprecedented occurrence, a thing that legitimately had never happened before.
Based around the idea of I think some European explorers being totally flabbergasted upon seeing the first black swan that they’d ever seen, their entire previous experience and culture teaching them that swans were always white.
The entire idea was that these kinds of things do actually happen, historically, with fairly decent regularity.
But, a whole bunch of people who I guess just skim-read Taleb’s writings… just took a ‘Black Swan Event’ to mean ‘something very uncommon’.
… Which is missing the point entirely.
Because ‘something very uncommon’ very often is something that is considered, is modelled in as a possibility (just a low possibility) in risk evaluation models.
A Black Swan Event on the other hand is supposed to be something that escapes that, that could not even exist as any kind of a possibility in your risk model.
Basically, if I can run through a list of assumptions your risk model makes, and then describe scenarios where those assumptions are broken, and how that changes your risk model… those aren’t really Black Swan events, especially if I can also model the chances of your assumptions being wrong, based on … you know, other times those kinds of assumptions have turned out to be wrong, in the past.
Consider the insurance/legal concept of ‘an act of God’.
Its… not literally meant to mean an actual act of God, its meant to mean something out of any involved party’s direct control.
… But you can still build entire sophisticated risk models based around the likelihood that ‘God’ will do a particular thing at a particular point in time.
The phrase Black Swan Event was invented to try and convince people that they should probably be double checking their investment/insurance strategies, should probably lower their overall risk appetite compared to what existing models tell you it should be, that people should be more conservative with money, have backup/contingency plans, because those models often, provably, fail to appreciate or understand or imagine hitherto unprecedented events.
But, a bunch of morons just started using the term as an excuse for themselves when things happened that they did know were possible, just didn’t think were likely.
Or, as an excuse for things that… fairly easily could be modelled, if they had done proper underwriting, used more comprehensive, already existing metholodologies… but well that’s hard and takes time and involves more work!
The exact opposite of what Taleb was trying to get people to do.
So, in order for the unexpected number to be caused by a Black Swan event, the event has to be unaccounted for in modelling. If the number has a 0.1% chance of happening but is caused by variables that were accounted for, it doesn’t count. Is this correct?
And a number that had 50% chance of happening can also be caused by a BS event. Basically the status of BS event is unrelated to the probabilty of the resulting numbers.
And now I’m not sure of what I should do with that concept
I see how it could get used as a variant of “the future can never be determined with full certainty and therefore I can’t be blamed for anything”
So, in order for the unexpected number to be caused by a Black Swan event, the event has to be unaccounted for in modelling. If the number has a 0.1% chance of happening but is caused by variables that were accounted for, it doesn’t count. Is this correct?
You’ve basically got it, yeah.
Its… admittedly complex to grasp, or explain in detail without me getting a cup of coffee and then giving a whole ass intermediate/advanced level statistics crash course.
The core idea is that… you are not as smart as you think you are, not matter how much your hedge fund or whatever pays you.
Things can happen that you literally are not capable of conceiving as possible, untill they happen.
Thats a real Black Swan.
But, thats not the same things as things you can concieve of, but think are unlikely, think can be easily hedged against, or aren’t worth hedging against.
Thats just your own hubris.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your
philosophyback-tested, multi-variable stochastic model.And now with BlackRock utterly collapsing, we’re all about to find out our pensions and 401ks were … essentially mostly theoretical.
It is like when sg1 went back in time because a solar flair intercepted them while they were traveling.
Don’t worry everyone, the rich are doing just fine.
Better than ever in fact.
Whew
Unexpectedly.
Exactly. Diaper Don tariffing everything that moves, for one, and sending “doge” in to fire tons of government workers:
Gosh and gee willickers, you mean that will have a negative impact on things?
–Murc’s Law Media and reactionary centrists everywhere
what movie is this from?
turns out the economy was underage
moved on her like a bitch
Don’t worry. I’m sure if we dump even more money into AI, somehow it will all be ok.
/s
How long before the reporting of jobs numbers becomes illegal by EO and then there’s just vague statements of the economy is doing great, it’s gone up by billinty blollars just this past month! You’re not suffering, you’re efficiency maxing!
Remember GWB’s reaction to someone having THREE jobs?
You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.
I’m imagining an administration with even less empathy reacting to people’s experiences under an economy imploded by PEDOnald combined with AI delusions run amok.
That’s a downwardly revised January gain of 126,000, and they had estimated a 50k gain for February. When was it we were told the Dow was over 50,000 again?
What is a downwards revised gain.
They said it was up by X number, it actually went down by Y number. They could’ve worded it better.
Phhht. Probably thought they’d fill those jobs with AI, since they’re so hard for it. Even though they have no freakin idea what it is or can do…
Or more likely they didn’t care to even fudge the numbers anymore because they plan on rigging every election to stay in power like the disgusting bloodsucking parasites like they are. They don’t care if you are unhappy because what are you gonna do…
My guess:
Tariffs
