Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain
Be sure to visit Jesse’s site for more great info.
The headline jobs number came out worse than expected, and the paint peeled off the US stocks tape from its recent run into the end of the second quarter.
The trend herd had been looking at the bounce off the bottom and before today’s number had some hopes that the leveling off or even a surprise to the upside would confirm a bottom in the economy. The sharp downturn threw cold water on those happy thoughts. [click on charts for larger images]
The actuals came in about as expected, a little lower perhaps, and as you can see there was a strong downward seasonal adjustment.
The “Birth-Death” model was in line with the usual swag that the BLS performs at this time of year. As you know this number is added to the “actual jobs number” before seasonal adjustment, so at this time of year it helps to inflate the headline number slightly.
With this regular repetition of the number without regard to the underlying economic activity over the years, and its feed into the actuals, one has to wonder why they don’t just roll this number into their seasonal adjustments? Do they feel the need to justify their tinkering with actual number beyond some limit? The Birth-Death model is certainly no viable rationale, but it does serve to employ a few analysts, and is likely some pet project of a past BLS director.
And here is the only chart worth watching, the long term trend. There has been no bottom yet reached in the jobs lost. This is not so much a reflection on the stimulus because of the lag, and the obvious data showing that consumers tended to use the stimulus to pay down their immediate debt which is a worthwhile endeavor, but does not give a quick boost to jobs.
The issue might be a bit of a red herring, because the economic stimulus pales by comparison with the enormous amount of stimulus provided to the banking sector, which is stimulating some operators like Goldman Sachs to pay their employees, on average, a record $700,000 in annual pay. Now THAT is stimulus, but perhaps one that is counterproductive.
We are on the record in the opinion that the Obama economic team is ineffective, backward-thinking, compromised, and possibly corrupt. They are serving the corporate banks and not the people. They should be replaced starting with Larry Summers who is a Greenspan and Rubin crony and the core of failure on the team. Tim Geithner should follow to find better employment for his talents, possibly as a salesman of men’s suits.
