{"id":50448,"date":"2017-04-07T10:32:57","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T14:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/?p=50448"},"modified":"2017-04-07T10:32:57","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T14:32:57","slug":"wonky-data-the-unemployment-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/07\/wonky-data-the-unemployment-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Wonky Data &#8211; The Unemployment Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On one hand, the latest release of the March Unemployment report did not meet expectations for new hires. On the other, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.5% &#8211; far lower than most predictions.<\/p>\n<p>This is one of the problems when there are many reports that the media covers. Just a few years ago most analysts primarily followed the &#8220;official&#8221; reports from government agencies . Now we seem to have private firms that have been gaining media attention that add to the data-plots used in analyzing the economic situation. Over the past few years, firms like ADP, Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas and Markit have become names that we are all familiar with that give a glimpse into additional points of interest. This has led to incremental adjustments to estimates over the course of a month and adds a great deal of confusion to the reports from the &#8220;official&#8221; agencies.<\/p>\n<p>While more data may seem better, there are times that it calls into question the validity of the &#8220;non-official&#8221; reports. This month provides a good example of this as the ADP report, released on Wednesday, showed a massive gain in private payrolls. The numbers came in well above expectations and, combined with the weekly initial claims report, had economists looking to Friday&#8217;s BLS report with excitement. The thought was that new hires reported by the BLS could easily come in well above estimates<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-50451\" src=\"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ADP_04052017.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"551\" height=\"329\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ADP_04052017.jpg 551w, https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ADP_04052017-300x179.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/ADP_04052017-440x264.jpg 440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 551px) 100vw, 551px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It did not pan out that way at all. Even as the unemployment rate dropped to 4.5% (without much change in the the labor participation rate), there were far few new hires than expected and negative revisions to both January and February&#8217;s reports.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-50449\" src=\"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/unemployment04072107.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"555\" height=\"335\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/unemployment04072107.jpg 555w, https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/unemployment04072107-300x181.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 555px) 100vw, 555px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-50450\" src=\"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/laborforce_04072017.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"545\" height=\"327\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/laborforce_04072017.jpg 545w, https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/laborforce_04072017-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/laborforce_04072017-440x264.jpg 440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 545px) 100vw, 545px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The bottom line &#8211; maybe we should be paying less attention to the interim reports as they have less overall utility.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Analysis from Briefing.com<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>March nonfarm payrolls increased by 98,000 (Briefing.com consensus 180,000). \u00a0Over the past three months, job gains have averaged 178,000 per month.\n<ul>\n<li>February\u00a0nonfarm payrolls revised to 219,000 from 235,000<\/li>\n<li>January\u00a0nonfarm payrolls revised to 216,000 from 238,000<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>March private sector payrolls increased by 89,000 (Briefing.com consensus 175,000)\n<ul>\n<li>February private sector payrolls revised to 221,000 from 227,000<\/li>\n<li>January private sector payrolls revised to 204,000 from 221,000<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>March unemployment rate was 4.5% (Briefing.com consensus 4.7%) versus 4.7% in February\n<ul>\n<li>Persons unemployed for 27 weeks or more accounted for 23.3% of the unemployed versus 23.8% in February<\/li>\n<li>The U6 unemployment rate, which accounts for both unemployed and underemployed workers, decreased to 8.9% from 9.2% in February<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>March average hourly earnings increased 0.2% (Briefing.com consensus +0.3%) after increasing an upwardly revised 0.3% (from 0.2%)\u00a0in February\n<ul>\n<li>Over the last 12 months, average hourly earnings have risen 2.7% versus<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>2.8% for the 12-month period ending in February<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The average workweek in March was 34.3 hours (Briefing.com consensus 34.4), versus a downwardly revised 34.3 hours (from 34.4) in February\n<ul>\n<li>March manufacturing workweek decreased 0.2 hours to 40.6 hours<\/li>\n<li>Factory overtime dipped 0.1 hour to 3.2 hours<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The labor force participation rate was unchanged in March at 63.0%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On one hand, the latest release of the March Unemployment report did not meet expectations for new hires. On the other, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.5% &#8211; far lower than most predictions. This is one of the problems when there are many reports that the media covers. Just a few years ago most analysts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[510],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogandupdates","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedisciplinedinvestor.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}