Labor

Having pointed out a glaring error in today's payrolls report, which indicated that there was at least one math error in calculating the average hourly earnings number, and as a result casts doubt on every other piece of data released by the BLS, we urge algos and the handful of carbon-based traders, to take anything released by the BLS with a boulder of salt, especially data on wage inflation, until the BLS provides an explanation for what is going on.

As noted earlier, Wall Street was completely clueless ahead of today's payroll, with most expecting a small positive print but two brave forecasters went so far as to predict that the recent hurricanes would result in a negative print, and sure enough, moments ago the BLS reported that in September, the US economy lost 33,000 hurricane distorted jobs, the first payrolls decline since September 2010.

Tomorrow's hurricane-affected September jobs report will be... confusing. That is the (lack of) consensus from Wall Street analysts, who expect an average print of 80,000 (down from the 3-month average of 185K), however with huge variance on either side, with 4 economists predicting a loss of jobs, three expecting a print higher than 150K and one optimistic forecaster going as high as 260,000.

The amusing breakdown by bank is as follows:

We harp on the massive, unsustainable, yet largely unnoticed, debt burdens of American cities, counties and states fairly regularly because, well, it's a frightening issue if you spend just a little time to understand the math and ultimate consequences.  Here is some of our recent posts on the topic:

A new study from Joe Nation of Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research entitled "Pension Math: Public Pension Spending and Service Crowd Out in California, 2003-2030," says that the devastating consequences of the ill-advised, Cadillac pensions doled out to America's public employees over the past several decades are only getting started.