I listened to the Inside Economics podcast last week to prepare for this job report, and a lot of what you have above echoes what they were discussing. The only real difference is that they were expecting much lower numbers than what we saw.
The devil is in this single note at the bottom of the release - "the January response rate of 64.3 percent was below average."
Add in the change in methodology to the Birth-Death Rate Modeling and the variances are going to be ugly when the revisions hit in April. Seasonality always leaves January and July as ugly numbers that can be explained away by post-holiday realignment and summer shifts in employment (education since teachers are typically contract work that affects July/August numbers).
Health care is showing immigration in hiring data. Native born population filling in gaps?
*Really a political win, cheer the headlines and ignore the revisions.
I must be the go-to person for uncomfortable questions... I wonder how many people ICE hired in December. My cursory search told me that information is not available, which is worrisome all by itself -- their employment more than doubled in 2025 from 10,000 to over 22,000. I will just point out that putting workers in holding camps reduces employment, while hiring people to keep them there (mostly private prison operators) increases it, but at the cost of productive employment.
That revision is brutal. That means the economy was dragging even more than we thought. Dr.A wht are dome of the consequences of higher inflated jobs numbers? That is bewish territory for me.
I listened to the Inside Economics podcast last week to prepare for this job report, and a lot of what you have above echoes what they were discussing. The only real difference is that they were expecting much lower numbers than what we saw.
The devil is in this single note at the bottom of the release - "the January response rate of 64.3 percent was below average."
Add in the change in methodology to the Birth-Death Rate Modeling and the variances are going to be ugly when the revisions hit in April. Seasonality always leaves January and July as ugly numbers that can be explained away by post-holiday realignment and summer shifts in employment (education since teachers are typically contract work that affects July/August numbers).
Health care is showing immigration in hiring data. Native born population filling in gaps?
*Really a political win, cheer the headlines and ignore the revisions.
Very interesting. That's just why we needed this edition of decode econ.
But wait, you're saying economic growth won't be 7%? 😉
I must be the go-to person for uncomfortable questions... I wonder how many people ICE hired in December. My cursory search told me that information is not available, which is worrisome all by itself -- their employment more than doubled in 2025 from 10,000 to over 22,000. I will just point out that putting workers in holding camps reduces employment, while hiring people to keep them there (mostly private prison operators) increases it, but at the cost of productive employment.
The January jobs report added 130,000 new positions which sounds great until you realize 898,000 were revised away from last year. New post is up now breaking down what that actually means. https://open.substack.com/pub/fulcruminsights/p/something-has-to-give?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
That revision is brutal. That means the economy was dragging even more than we thought. Dr.A wht are dome of the consequences of higher inflated jobs numbers? That is bewish territory for me.
Beveridge Curve and JOLTS data...
Labor Force Participation and how we're determining matching in hiring. (Cobb-Douglas formula that I can't drag into this dialog box)
The fun of the Phillips Curve in measuring price elasticity relative to employment situation. (Sahm Rule gets a shoutout at this point!).
The Federal Reserve has a more interesting time adjusting Overall Rate because inflation tends to rise during times of "full employment".
Wages become distorted.
It's why every Economist will tell you that having the most accurate sampling and clearest methodology allows for trust in the data.