This kind of report makes me wonder why anyone would follow the jobs report so closely!

mark's picture
Article Link: 

This kind of report makes me wonder why anyone would follow the jobs report so closely!

Yes, the jobs report is something to keep your eye on, but how much weight should be placed on this short term metric?  Economists were predicting growth of 75,000 jobs and the actual number came in at 33,000 LESS jobs. Do they moonlight as meteorologists?  

After the predictions are shown to be wildly off, next are their reasons (excuses) why they mis-predicted. Granted there are all kinds of pitfalls in these short term projections (guesses).  There is the governments methodology for the arriving at the 75k jobs,  the economist's model error, and many others.

All joking aside, these are just short term numbers. Government numbers are often adjusted, like GDP, after the fact.  The important thing is that this is just one "piece of the puzzle" in the long-term.  While it is important, it is not of cardinal importance.  It is better to look at a series of months, but even that is not fool proof.   

Copyright 2017 Mark T. McLaren