The Department of Labor’s report released this morning on U.S. employment in April is universally described in media reports as a disastrous “miss” from the 1 million, or even more new jobs which was the “consensus” forecast and expectation following the upward trend in employment gains in the past two months. Only 266,000 new jobs were reported in the Establishment Survey, and in the Household Survey the official unemployment rate was reported back up to 6.1% due to an increase in the unemployed. Goods-producing employment was reported as actually falling by -16,000 jobs.
However the actual reported background data, not “seasonally adjusted,” simply do not support or approximate this. In absolute terms total employment reportedly grew by about 1 million – though still 8.5 million below the November 2019 peak – including growth of 150,000 in goods-producing employment, which is still about 850,000 below that peak. Even one long-established and respected contrarian employment report, which truthfully reported that real unemployment and misemployment is still over 16 million and 5 million more have dropped out of the labor force during the past year, nonetheless concluded that the real unemployment rate did not rise but dropped in April.
Since the “seasonally adjusted” headline numbers rule the media and public discussion, the following resulted. First, Wall Street immediately had a much-desired reason to cancel Janet Yellen’s admission of May 5 about inflation and coming rate increases, and so immediately both stocks and bonds rose sharply on the “bad news” while long-term interest rates, leverage rates, mortgage rates, etc. fell further. Second, Joe Biden could immediately take a podium and insist that his anti-productive and hyperinflationary “infrastructure and jobs” plan was absolutely and urgently necessary.
