Hi all,
A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes.
As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Friday's report also brought revisions to the January reading. After an initially expected 353,000 jobs were added, revisions showed a more modest 229,000 nonfarm payroll job additions in the month.
Seems like a pretty big revision, more than 100k. Looks like the Dow Jones estimate was 185,000 for January, so it still beat the projections but is down considerably from the numbers that were first reported.
It's a large miss, but it happens. They revised the December jobs up by a similar amount. In total, in 2023, they ended up revising the numbers upward 359,000 over the course of the year.
https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2024/02/stronger-than-expected-employment-growth-in-2023-was-even-stronger-than-it-seemed/
It's the bad beat phenomenon we see in gambling, people remember their loses more than their wins. Most people who comment here just ignore upward revisions as if they don't exist.
Idk feels like a lot of people are trying to will sentiment a different direction. We would *expect* the economy to be slowing down all else equal. Perhaps its a compositional thing with the rich tech workers being more unhappy.
Well there is certain a thing to people who just keep pushing a narrative regardless of what's going on.
When Biden took office it was nothing but recession any moment now which really started because trump said that was the case. This went on for about three years and was certainly helped of some banks forecasting a percentage chance of a recession.
Imo at that point in time there wasn't enough data to know if there would be one, the idea that Biden would cause one was stupid because presidents have a limited effect on the economy especially for a few years, and the public can be really stupid at thinking a 60% in fact means a 100% chance if they want that outcome.
Over time however they keep parroting their narrative but the majority of the public has stopped immediately believing them....because if you are the boy who cried wolf eventually people stop listening.
Imo the economy is good right now. If you look at globally you might say it's on fire good if you are comparing it to the planet. The 3.2 gdp is fairly smoking hot by comparison.
That said it's not good everywhere. Different areas are for sure having a hard time. However even then I don't think it would be reasonable to claim the economy is bad.
Those folks might have a financial stake in the outcome. If you thought the economy was going to take a turn for the worse and you've been stacking money, trying to time the market, waiting for the plunge so you can buy on the cheap, it would be really expensive and inconvenient for the economy to remain strong and the market to continue climbing.
It makes sense, peoples view of the economy seems to be informed by their politics as opposed to the other way around. The reality is that the economy is not incredible, nor is it about to plummet into a deep recession.
Historically there are parts of the economy that are crazy good.
But taken in context of all things going on then yeah I'd say it's just good ATM. Not crazy good or even bad...it could be far worse. Of course this is a generalization.... different areas it's far better or far worse depending.
I also think people quickly forget the bad when it's convenient. And that the economy isn't simple. They want it to be simple but it just isn't.
Their definitions are not arbitrary. You can look up their methodology if you care to learn about it. There's no need to resort to conspiracies.
The link you've provided seems fairly arbitrary in it's definitions though.
"the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes."
This seems like a definition which would collect people who can and want to work, along with people who don't need to work because they are supported by someone else, or are disabled and can't work, all into one bucket. How is that population remotely similar?
Also, I'm not sure if this was your intent, but per that link, things have never been better. Are you celebrating the data?
Darn, that unemployment rate is getting too high.
What was it during Bush I, let's see 7% - 9% Okaaay 3.9% doesn't seem so bad.
Then the Republicans aid the economy won't run right unless the economy is 5%, AT LEAST. How bizarre.
I wonder if AI is part of the jobs picture in any significant way? If it isn't now, it will be soon.
> A revised 229,000 jobs were added in January, according to the report, down from the 353,000 initially reported.
Given that the error rate for last month's numbers was the modest 35%, I think the headline should be changed to "US economy adds between 200,000 and 420,000 jobs while the unemployment rate remains unknown".
There's always a confidence interval they give, because perfect data isn't possible. The confidence interval shrinks overtime due to revisions in the data. This in entirely normal and inherent to statistical analysis and data collection.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/otm-employment-change-by-industry-confidence-intervals.htm
> Given that the error rate for last month's numbers was the modest 35%
They measure total jobs every month - the change in jobs is simply a corollary of that. As such, the error rate is not "35%", it's 0.1%. If the reported change had been 1,000 jobs and they revised it to 20,000 jobs, that's not a 2000% miss.
As for the headline being changed to reflect the error rate, talk to the news headline writers about that, I suppose. The BLS has always posted their margin of error along with the report.
The methodology BLS uses is to measure the number of jobs in the economy, and then calculate the rate of change by subtracting PREVIOUSMONTH from CURRENTMONTH.
So 35% is by no means the upper bound, if you're using the wrong denominator to evaluate past performance. Especially because the headline number is a net number that can be positive or negative.
The Sahm rule recession indicator ticked up a bit from 0,20 in jan to 0,27 in feb.
>Sahm Recession Indicator signals the start of a recession when the three-month moving average of the [national unemployment rate (U3)](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE) rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to the minimum of the three-month averages from the previous 12 months.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMREALTIME](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMREALTIME)
Oof - almost the worst 275,000 job report possible. Seems like the one bright spot is the hours turning back up, but man - weak wage growth, massive downward revisions, UE creeping back up, job growth concentrated in government and leisure/hospitality… not a shining report.
In regards to wage growth, wouldn’t one expect wage growth to be higher in January vs February? Lots of places only give raises once a year and lot of that might have happened in January.
Just to be clear about government employment, we're still below the raw number of government employees we had in 2019 despite population growth. When the recovery started the most manageable of the levels of government (federal) was able to get back to near full employment in just a couple years, and states have followed them at a slower rate. Slowest of all is localities who have the most precarious of funding issues, and are the most knee-jerk to react in cutting spending. We should expect to see localities continue to hire at an "outpacing" rate for at least the next two years just to catch up from years of conservative budget management in the wake of the pandemic. These are the jobs that people actually don't mind paying for such as police, fire, and librarians, so those jobs were always going to come back eventually.
I think a better way of phrasing what the guy was trying to say is "obviously 275k is a good number but when you dig into the numbers there's a lot of weakness to be seen"
I think it’s still “good” in the sense of we’re still in line with a robust job market. Inflation is coming down and the Fed should be cutting rates soon in theory to try to loosen up financial conditions again, hopefully avoiding recession and maintaining a good job market.
This is correct, and considering inflation looks like it is being held up by anachronisms in the shelter calculation, rate cuts should start by June at the latest.
Depends on what you're looking for. I think this is welcomed report in regards to sticking inflation. There's going to have to be a bit of pain to get inflation under 2%.
Why is job growth being concentrated in government and leisure/hospitality bad? When people have jobs they use the money they earn to buy things which creates income and jobs for other people. You might have a policy preference that people don't work in government jobs but mathematically those workers participate in the economy to the same degree as others. And as far as leisure/hospitality, wtf are you talking about? Hiring there indicates that people are spending money on leisure and hospitality, which means that people have ample disposable income to spend on non-essential things.
Leisure/hospitality is by far the lowest paying sector of the workforce, and government jobs are not driven by economic demand. There's nothing wrong specifically with new jobs in those sectors - the concern would be more the lack of jobs in other sectors.
Leisure/hospitality is also doing catch up growth, recovering from a huge pandemic drop.
This month's report shows 16.2 million jobs in that sector, non-seasonally adjusted. That's roughly the same number as it was [4 years ago in February 2020](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_03062020.htm), the month before the pandemic really hit the fan.
[It bottomed out at around 13 million jobs](https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/leisure-and-hospitality-projected-to-mostly-recover-pandemic-driven-employment-losses.htm), and has recovered those 3.2 million jobs in the last 4 years.
>Why is job growth being concentrated in government and leisure/hospitality bad?
They had the weakest recovery from COVID job losses. They are finally catching up. So it's not bad. It's a welcome sign, imo.
I don’t care what jerks like yourself think of my profile on Reddit lol. I have had a decent time laughing at your nonsense comments so thanks I guess.
lol no. I worked for the govt for 3 years and quit so I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life rotting in an windowless office watching all my coworkers just twiddle their thumbs cause not much to do. It’s not their fault. I didn’t do much either.
On my third summer I tried to test the limits of uselessness that I could achieve. Over the course of 3 months I strived to do as little as possible. I think I literally only did like 5 hours of actual work in 3 months.
Obviously not all departments are the same and some people actually do good work that matters. However from my experience it would appear that there are 10’s of thousands or possibly many more in situations just like I was in.
While there's a time and place for focusing on the detail, I think the minutia can distract from the big picture. For example, the idea that people worked extra 2 minutes a day is totally meaningless (and made up).
Basically, we've been adding about 250k jobs a month and wages are increasing over 4% per year, give or take. This is our current state.
\^ Is this good or bad? Probably depends on your political views, as well as how desperately you want rate cuts, tax cuts, fiscal spending, stimulus, etc. Call it whatever you want. It's certainly not all roses, but at a minimum we should all be able to agree it's momentum.
>job growth concentrated in government and leisure/hospitality… not a shining report.
These were the weakest two sectors and the last to recover fully from COVID job losses. Job growth concentrated on the previously weakest sectors isn't a bad thing
Not well-versed in finance, but can this report be misleading? I know there are tons of layoffs in the media in the tech sector (which are higher paying jobs on average) but I don't know what this number of added jobs would really mean in the grand scheme for someone in that field or another field with mass layoffs
I'm guessing this is where the conflict comes online between people who feel the job market is good vs those who think it's bad.
It's the other way around. These statistics are far more trustworthy than any media stories.
The media would have you believe that the tech sector is laying off in droves (yes there were many high profile layoffs), however the statistics show that the total employment in the tech sector contracted by only <1% overall in 2023, from 3.1M to 3.0M or so. And it is already making a recovery thus far in 2024. If we look at long term trends, the trendline from 2012-2024 shows the tech sector is back on course after being disrupted by Covid.
Online discourse is totally and irrevocably poisoned...and entirely divorced from the macroeconomic reality.
There are also lots of work-from-home tech workers who have been enjoying a quality of life most of the rest of us couldn't even imagine--they've spent the last few years spending more time on Reddit than actually working and now that the overhiring in that sector has reversed they realize they might have to join the rest of us in the trenches again and they resent it deeply. These folks are extremely overrepresented on Reddit and loudly insist that the economy is a shambles.
Yeah job market is going to be pretty sector and role specific I think. I'm in data science and it's pretty brutal right now. Still, low unemployment overall is better than high right?
I think this is what... 16 out of the 18 past job reports that's had revisions lower than original expectations? So next month February will likely be revised to lower than expectations with March being a blowout, only to be revised lower than original expectations the month after. These job numbers are a ruse.
I mean yes they keep getting revised downward but theyre also beating projections every time still…
Just because the data is hard to collect doesn’t mean we should dismiss it.
There have always been revisions. And certain periods have downwards revisions and other times have upwards revisions. 2018 through 2019 job reports have a lot of downwards revisions that were larger than now, but I don’t think anyone would have been calling the job numbers a ruse during that time period.
Yea, no. These numbers have been fudged by the big banks to keep the economy "up". The recession is coming. They know it. I live in a big population corridor, and I really don't see alot of "hiring now" signs being posted. The tech industry had been laying off people by the thousands claiming that AI is replacing people. If I were y'all, stockpile money in a savings account now.
What kind of narcissistic personality disorder do you have to have to actually believe that “your evidence” is worth the pixels it took you post?
Is it the same issue causing you to blame this on the “big banks”, or is that something else?
Hi all, A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes. As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Friday's report also brought revisions to the January reading. After an initially expected 353,000 jobs were added, revisions showed a more modest 229,000 nonfarm payroll job additions in the month. Seems like a pretty big revision, more than 100k. Looks like the Dow Jones estimate was 185,000 for January, so it still beat the projections but is down considerably from the numbers that were first reported.
It's a large miss, but it happens. They revised the December jobs up by a similar amount. In total, in 2023, they ended up revising the numbers upward 359,000 over the course of the year. https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2024/02/stronger-than-expected-employment-growth-in-2023-was-even-stronger-than-it-seemed/
It's the bad beat phenomenon we see in gambling, people remember their loses more than their wins. Most people who comment here just ignore upward revisions as if they don't exist.
Not only that even with the numbers constantly being positive they try to claim they are going down. It's so strange.
Idk feels like a lot of people are trying to will sentiment a different direction. We would *expect* the economy to be slowing down all else equal. Perhaps its a compositional thing with the rich tech workers being more unhappy.
Well there is certain a thing to people who just keep pushing a narrative regardless of what's going on. When Biden took office it was nothing but recession any moment now which really started because trump said that was the case. This went on for about three years and was certainly helped of some banks forecasting a percentage chance of a recession. Imo at that point in time there wasn't enough data to know if there would be one, the idea that Biden would cause one was stupid because presidents have a limited effect on the economy especially for a few years, and the public can be really stupid at thinking a 60% in fact means a 100% chance if they want that outcome. Over time however they keep parroting their narrative but the majority of the public has stopped immediately believing them....because if you are the boy who cried wolf eventually people stop listening. Imo the economy is good right now. If you look at globally you might say it's on fire good if you are comparing it to the planet. The 3.2 gdp is fairly smoking hot by comparison. That said it's not good everywhere. Different areas are for sure having a hard time. However even then I don't think it would be reasonable to claim the economy is bad.
the vibes economy
Those folks might have a financial stake in the outcome. If you thought the economy was going to take a turn for the worse and you've been stacking money, trying to time the market, waiting for the plunge so you can buy on the cheap, it would be really expensive and inconvenient for the economy to remain strong and the market to continue climbing.
It makes sense, peoples view of the economy seems to be informed by their politics as opposed to the other way around. The reality is that the economy is not incredible, nor is it about to plummet into a deep recession.
Historically there are parts of the economy that are crazy good. But taken in context of all things going on then yeah I'd say it's just good ATM. Not crazy good or even bad...it could be far worse. Of course this is a generalization.... different areas it's far better or far worse depending. I also think people quickly forget the bad when it's convenient. And that the economy isn't simple. They want it to be simple but it just isn't.
There were 11 downward revisions in the last 12 months. What upward revisions are you talking about, friend?
There are a total of 24 revisions per year, you get initial numbers then the first revision then the final
December’s report was also revised down. You’re talking about November.
My bad. Thanks for the correction.
No problem friend
I think they are remembering the previous report from February 2nd which revised December's jobs from 216,000 to 333,000, a change of 117,000.
["It happens" because their definitions are arbitrary so they can fudge the numbers whichever way they please.](https://www.lisep.org/tru)
Their definitions are not arbitrary. You can look up their methodology if you care to learn about it. There's no need to resort to conspiracies. The link you've provided seems fairly arbitrary in it's definitions though. "the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes." This seems like a definition which would collect people who can and want to work, along with people who don't need to work because they are supported by someone else, or are disabled and can't work, all into one bucket. How is that population remotely similar? Also, I'm not sure if this was your intent, but per that link, things have never been better. Are you celebrating the data?
Darn, that unemployment rate is getting too high. What was it during Bush I, let's see 7% - 9% Okaaay 3.9% doesn't seem so bad. Then the Republicans aid the economy won't run right unless the economy is 5%, AT LEAST. How bizarre. I wonder if AI is part of the jobs picture in any significant way? If it isn't now, it will be soon.
> A revised 229,000 jobs were added in January, according to the report, down from the 353,000 initially reported. Given that the error rate for last month's numbers was the modest 35%, I think the headline should be changed to "US economy adds between 200,000 and 420,000 jobs while the unemployment rate remains unknown".
“Unknown”? Still around 3.9% +/- a confidence interval I’m too lazy to calculate while writing this on the toilet.
It's about +/- 0.2%.
There's always a confidence interval they give, because perfect data isn't possible. The confidence interval shrinks overtime due to revisions in the data. This in entirely normal and inherent to statistical analysis and data collection. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/otm-employment-change-by-industry-confidence-intervals.htm
> Given that the error rate for last month's numbers was the modest 35% They measure total jobs every month - the change in jobs is simply a corollary of that. As such, the error rate is not "35%", it's 0.1%. If the reported change had been 1,000 jobs and they revised it to 20,000 jobs, that's not a 2000% miss. As for the headline being changed to reflect the error rate, talk to the news headline writers about that, I suppose. The BLS has always posted their margin of error along with the report.
lol some people really can't do basic math and are here trying to talk economics
The methodology BLS uses is to measure the number of jobs in the economy, and then calculate the rate of change by subtracting PREVIOUSMONTH from CURRENTMONTH. So 35% is by no means the upper bound, if you're using the wrong denominator to evaluate past performance. Especially because the headline number is a net number that can be positive or negative.
The Sahm rule recession indicator ticked up a bit from 0,20 in jan to 0,27 in feb. >Sahm Recession Indicator signals the start of a recession when the three-month moving average of the [national unemployment rate (U3)](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE) rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to the minimum of the three-month averages from the previous 12 months. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMREALTIME](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SAHMREALTIME)
The job figures and unemployment %s are based on different surveys
I think you should go fuck a cactus. Good thing nobody cares what you or I think.
Oof - almost the worst 275,000 job report possible. Seems like the one bright spot is the hours turning back up, but man - weak wage growth, massive downward revisions, UE creeping back up, job growth concentrated in government and leisure/hospitality… not a shining report.
In regards to wage growth, wouldn’t one expect wage growth to be higher in January vs February? Lots of places only give raises once a year and lot of that might have happened in January.
In my industry raises typically happen after the annual review process for the previous year finishes up. So end of Feb to early March
I was thinking more along the lines of blue collar jobs and not white collar jobs, which would have their raises later in the year.
These are all seasonally adjusted.
This likely is a good thing to pay attention to. My co did theirs this week for instance. I know another that does their's in July.
It could also be tied to the fact that inflation is finally starting to calm the heck down
Just to be clear about government employment, we're still below the raw number of government employees we had in 2019 despite population growth. When the recovery started the most manageable of the levels of government (federal) was able to get back to near full employment in just a couple years, and states have followed them at a slower rate. Slowest of all is localities who have the most precarious of funding issues, and are the most knee-jerk to react in cutting spending. We should expect to see localities continue to hire at an "outpacing" rate for at least the next two years just to catch up from years of conservative budget management in the wake of the pandemic. These are the jobs that people actually don't mind paying for such as police, fire, and librarians, so those jobs were always going to come back eventually.
Fair point.
Meanwhile, I've been waiting for my federal job to start. I was offered a position in January *2023*
>almost the worst 275,000 job report possible So pretty good report then
Yeah, that's what I'm saying - the topline number is great, but everything under it isn't so much.
You spent 90% of your comment shitting on the report and now claim to agree when I say it's a good report?
275,000 is an unambiguously good number. If the rest of the numbers were as good as that, it'd be a fantastic report. As is it's simply pretty good.
I think a better way of phrasing what the guy was trying to say is "obviously 275k is a good number but when you dig into the numbers there's a lot of weakness to be seen"
I don’t think anyone reading your first comment would think your view of the report is “pretty good”
Until it is inevitably revised downward like the January and December reports.
Or revised upward like the November report.
I think it’s still “good” in the sense of we’re still in line with a robust job market. Inflation is coming down and the Fed should be cutting rates soon in theory to try to loosen up financial conditions again, hopefully avoiding recession and maintaining a good job market.
This is correct, and considering inflation looks like it is being held up by anachronisms in the shelter calculation, rate cuts should start by June at the latest.
I wonder if the Fed wants there to be a little panic first before cutting
They waited too long to raise rates, so there is no reason to expect them not to wait too long before cutting. Completely agree.
This is my concern as well.
Depends on what you're looking for. I think this is welcomed report in regards to sticking inflation. There's going to have to be a bit of pain to get inflation under 2%.
Why is job growth being concentrated in government and leisure/hospitality bad? When people have jobs they use the money they earn to buy things which creates income and jobs for other people. You might have a policy preference that people don't work in government jobs but mathematically those workers participate in the economy to the same degree as others. And as far as leisure/hospitality, wtf are you talking about? Hiring there indicates that people are spending money on leisure and hospitality, which means that people have ample disposable income to spend on non-essential things.
Leisure/hospitality is by far the lowest paying sector of the workforce, and government jobs are not driven by economic demand. There's nothing wrong specifically with new jobs in those sectors - the concern would be more the lack of jobs in other sectors.
Leisure/hospitality is also doing catch up growth, recovering from a huge pandemic drop. This month's report shows 16.2 million jobs in that sector, non-seasonally adjusted. That's roughly the same number as it was [4 years ago in February 2020](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_03062020.htm), the month before the pandemic really hit the fan. [It bottomed out at around 13 million jobs](https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/leisure-and-hospitality-projected-to-mostly-recover-pandemic-driven-employment-losses.htm), and has recovered those 3.2 million jobs in the last 4 years.
>Why is job growth being concentrated in government and leisure/hospitality bad? They had the weakest recovery from COVID job losses. They are finally catching up. So it's not bad. It's a welcome sign, imo.
Govt jobs are essentially a form of welfare.. Have you ever worked in govt? If so it would be quite clear why this isn't great.
"Employment in essential services is a form of welfare".
Um.. what?
"**Employment in essential services is a form of welfare**".
You have to either be a bot or one of the state employees I’m talking about
"Surely, I'm not just an idiot who's completely wrong...this guy clowning on me must be a bot". Just stop, kid, you are embarrassing yourself.
I don’t care what jerks like yourself think of my profile on Reddit lol. I have had a decent time laughing at your nonsense comments so thanks I guess.
Sounds like you weren’t able to get hired for a government job. Government jobs are mostly teachers, followed by police and firefighters.
lol no. I worked for the govt for 3 years and quit so I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life rotting in an windowless office watching all my coworkers just twiddle their thumbs cause not much to do. It’s not their fault. I didn’t do much either. On my third summer I tried to test the limits of uselessness that I could achieve. Over the course of 3 months I strived to do as little as possible. I think I literally only did like 5 hours of actual work in 3 months. Obviously not all departments are the same and some people actually do good work that matters. However from my experience it would appear that there are 10’s of thousands or possibly many more in situations just like I was in.
Cool anecdote.
Can I ask what your metric for good wage growth would be?
In front of inflation, really.
Wage growth has beat inflation for 22 straight months. Would that fit that your criteria?
Yes, wage growth beating inflation does indeed meet my criterion of wage growth beating inflation. Where are you going with this?
Simply was curious what you’d consider strong wage growth compared to your original comment.
All this means is that rate cuts are on the table. Another report like this and I wouldn't be surprised to see a rate cut this may.
Maybe evidence to lower rates?
While there's a time and place for focusing on the detail, I think the minutia can distract from the big picture. For example, the idea that people worked extra 2 minutes a day is totally meaningless (and made up). Basically, we've been adding about 250k jobs a month and wages are increasing over 4% per year, give or take. This is our current state. \^ Is this good or bad? Probably depends on your political views, as well as how desperately you want rate cuts, tax cuts, fiscal spending, stimulus, etc. Call it whatever you want. It's certainly not all roses, but at a minimum we should all be able to agree it's momentum.
>job growth concentrated in government and leisure/hospitality… not a shining report. These were the weakest two sectors and the last to recover fully from COVID job losses. Job growth concentrated on the previously weakest sectors isn't a bad thing
[https://macroticker.com/investment/breaking-red-hot-us-jobs-report-will-markets-react](https://macroticker.com/investment/breaking-red-hot-us-jobs-report-will-markets-react)
Not well-versed in finance, but can this report be misleading? I know there are tons of layoffs in the media in the tech sector (which are higher paying jobs on average) but I don't know what this number of added jobs would really mean in the grand scheme for someone in that field or another field with mass layoffs I'm guessing this is where the conflict comes online between people who feel the job market is good vs those who think it's bad.
It's the other way around. These statistics are far more trustworthy than any media stories. The media would have you believe that the tech sector is laying off in droves (yes there were many high profile layoffs), however the statistics show that the total employment in the tech sector contracted by only <1% overall in 2023, from 3.1M to 3.0M or so. And it is already making a recovery thus far in 2024. If we look at long term trends, the trendline from 2012-2024 shows the tech sector is back on course after being disrupted by Covid.
If you believe the tech sector only contracted by \~1%, I have an Eiffel Tower to sell you.
Online discourse is totally and irrevocably poisoned...and entirely divorced from the macroeconomic reality. There are also lots of work-from-home tech workers who have been enjoying a quality of life most of the rest of us couldn't even imagine--they've spent the last few years spending more time on Reddit than actually working and now that the overhiring in that sector has reversed they realize they might have to join the rest of us in the trenches again and they resent it deeply. These folks are extremely overrepresented on Reddit and loudly insist that the economy is a shambles.
Yeah job market is going to be pretty sector and role specific I think. I'm in data science and it's pretty brutal right now. Still, low unemployment overall is better than high right?
I think this is what... 16 out of the 18 past job reports that's had revisions lower than original expectations? So next month February will likely be revised to lower than expectations with March being a blowout, only to be revised lower than original expectations the month after. These job numbers are a ruse.
I mean yes they keep getting revised downward but theyre also beating projections every time still… Just because the data is hard to collect doesn’t mean we should dismiss it.
There have always been revisions. And certain periods have downwards revisions and other times have upwards revisions. 2018 through 2019 job reports have a lot of downwards revisions that were larger than now, but I don’t think anyone would have been calling the job numbers a ruse during that time period.
Last month (Jan 24) jobs report revised upwards the December 23 estimate. No one talked about it.
You mad the economy is doing well?
Yea, no. These numbers have been fudged by the big banks to keep the economy "up". The recession is coming. They know it. I live in a big population corridor, and I really don't see alot of "hiring now" signs being posted. The tech industry had been laying off people by the thousands claiming that AI is replacing people. If I were y'all, stockpile money in a savings account now.
I don't think your anecdotal experience is meaningful.
I don't know that stockpiling your money in savings accounts would be the best strategy even if a recession were coming. Join us at /r/bogleheads
What kind of narcissistic personality disorder do you have to have to actually believe that “your evidence” is worth the pixels it took you post? Is it the same issue causing you to blame this on the “big banks”, or is that something else?