More than a year ago, I stopped writing about the employment numbers. In some ways, there is nothing more important to the economy than the number of people gaining or losing jobs. The reason I stopped was the “data” was clearly being faked. Month after month, we saw great job growth on the day of the report when there was a lot of attention and newspaper headlines. In subsequent months, those impressive job gains were almost always revised down when there were fewer eyes on the report. There were even two massive revisions lowering prior job growth figures by more than three quarters of a million jobs. Unlike the CPI, which is often inaccurate, but directionally correct, the jobs “data” was too unreliable to consider.
Zero Hedge is now reporting that during the third quarter of 2024 (just before the election), we were told that employment rose by 399k jobs. Revised data by Business Employment Dynamics now shows a loss of 1k jobs in that time frame. There are other 2024 revisions as well which indicate that reported job gains were really losses.
It’s become very difficult to trust any data coming from the government. This isn’t intended to be a partisan post. I don’t have any evidence that the data is more accurate when one party occupies the White House than when it’s the other. All I can do is analyze what I think is useful in making investment decisions and ignore what is clearly nonsense. (For those of you who are new here, “nonsense” is the word I use when I’m feeling too polite to write “lies”.)
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