Labor

Jobs Report Blues

Paul Craig Roberts

On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were 215,000 new jobs in March.

John Williams of ShadowStats.com reports that these “new jobs” result from the the Birth-Death model that “artificially inflates headline month-to-month payroll gains with add-factors that currently average well in excess of 200,000 jobs per month.”

In other words, the jobs are the product of a model’s assumption that unreported new start-ups created 200,000 more jobs than unreported business failures lost.

Earlier his week, California paved the way for a $15/hour minimum wage, in a move that essentially communicated the following message: “..to hell with economics.”

The living wage issue is one of the most controversial debates playing out in America today and it goes right to the heart of partisan politics.

Anyone who’s “feeling the Bern” so to speak, believes they’re entitled to make enough flipping burgers to feed their family. And you know what? They’re wrong. Dead wrong.

The FOMC may have cut its rate hike forecast from 4 to 2, following by an even more dovish speech by Janet Yellen, but Goldman is convinced the Fed is wrong. As a result, after looking at today's payrolls report, its chief economist Jan Hatzius said that "we ultimately think the committee will move faster than the two-hike pace implied by the latest “dot plot”, despite the dovish signals from the March meeting and Chair Yellen’s remarks this week" and that "we continue to expect the FOMC to raise rates three times in 2016."

On the surface, the March jobs reported was better than expected... except for manufacturing workers. As shown in the chart below, in the past month, a disturbing 29,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. This was the single biggest monthly drop in the series going back to December 2009.

At 8:30am Eastern, the BLS will report the March payrolls report: the median forecast calls for a March nonfarm payrolls gain of 205k vs 242k in Feb., the high estimate is 250k, the low is 100k. The number is released three days after a particularly dovish Yellen speech, which prompted many to ask "what does the Fed know" - today's payrolls report will either provide the answer, if it is a big miss, or it will add to the confusion: if payrolls are surging, why is the Fed so concerned.

This is the breakdown of NFP expectations by bank: