Spot the outlier: Birth Death adjustments in 2010, 2011 and 2012: +6K; +5K; and +52K
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 3, 2012
Happy by the headline establishment survey print of 133,245 which says that the US “added” 163,000 jobs in July from 133,082 last month? Consider this: the number was based on a non seasonally adjusted July number of 132,868. This was a 1.248 million drop from the June print. So how did the smoothing work out to make a real plunge into an “adjusted” rise? Simple: the BLS “added” 377K jobs for seasonal purposes. This was the largest seasonal addition in the past decade for a July NFP print in the past decade, possibly ever, as the first chart below shows. But wait, there’s more: the Birth Death adjustment, which adds to the NSA Print to get to the final number, was +52k. How does this compare to July 2011? It is about 1000% higher: the last B/D adjustment was a tiny +5K! In other words, of the 163,000 jobs “added”, 429,000 was based on purely statistical fudging. Doesn’t matter – the flashing red headline is good enough for the algos.
Go see the charts they posted. Also, there is more here.
Shorter:
Of the supposed 163k net “jobs” created last month, 429k were created through BLS statistical adjustment. Actual jobs: -195k.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) August 3, 2012
