Seasonal And Birth Death Adjustments Add 429,000 Statistical "Jobs"
How do you show 163,000 new jobs were created in July?
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.
That's right, the BLS assumed 429,000 new jobs were created ... somewhere.
This won't be the last time we will see improbably "adjustments" to the jobs number between now and the election.
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