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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (4077)	4/10/2004 5:26:04 PM
From: siempre	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

OK! Mish....I'll do that.... & take you out of the "all is...." category too.... btw, how'd you respond before I finished editing?... that article by Temple is a must read imo....

To: mishedlo who wrote (4077)	4/10/2004 6:22:59 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Here is my post to Mauldin: Let's get to the bottom of these employment numbers if we can. Here is my analysis. Message 19984810 Copied below as follows: bls.gov Let's start with total employment stats on page 7 .... Table A-1. Employment status of the civilian population by sex and age Employed ...... unadjusted 137,384 137,691 Employed ........ adjusted 138,301 138,298 Unadjusted we gained 307,00 jobs February to March so they say. From the same line adjusted we see that we lost 3,000 jobs! WTF? They use the higher of unadjusted or adjusted whatever suits their purpose? What a crock of BS. But let'd dig deeper. From the same table Unemployment rate ...... 5.6 5.7 Unemployment went up Now Check out table A-5 on page 10 .... This is fun Table A-5. Employed persons by class of worker and part-time status Part time for economic reasons ..... adjusted 4,437 4,733 Part time for economic reasons ... unadjusted 4,764 4,868 People working part time for economic reasons skyrocketed by over 296,000 Jobs between February and March seasonally adjusted, and over 104,000 unadjusted.. Table A-8 on page 13 is interesting as well. Table A-8. Unemployed persons by reason for unemployment Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs seasonally adjusted ...... 4,323 4,607 unadjusted ............... 4,888 4,920 So we created 307,000 jobs and unemployment went up by 284,000 seasonally adjusted and 32,000 unadjusted Lets look at newly unemployed, also on page 13 Table A-9. Unemployed persons by duration of unemployment Less than 5 weeks seasonally adjusted .......2,468 2,589 Less than 5 weeks unadjusted ................2,318 2,413 Newly unemployed went up by 121,000 adjusted Newly unemployed went up by 95,000 unadjusted Let's look at total non-farm payrolls on page 16 Note that these are all PRELIMINARY numbers Table B-1. Employees on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail Total nonfarm ..... preliminary unadjusted 128,794 129,801 Total nonfarm ....... preliminary adjusted 130,240 130,548 WTF??? UNADJUSTED we gained 100,700 jobs ADJUSTED we supposedly gained 308,000 jobs How can this possibly jive with Table A-1? Let's look at Average Hours worked on page 19 Table B-2. Average weekly hours of production or nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail Total private ..... unadjusted 33.8 33.5 Total private ....... adjusted 33.8 33.7 Average work week declined by .3 unadjusted and .1 adjusted On to a big key as to whether or not the FED can hike... Average hourly wages on page 20 Table B-3. Average hourly and weekly earnings of production or nonsupervisory workers on private nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail Total private weekly wages adjusted ..... $527.28 $520.93 Total private weekly wages unadjusted ... $524.58 $523.70 Thus the average worker is taking home $6.35 less per week adjusted and $.88 less per week unadjusted. Certainly no wage inflation for sure. =========================================================== Here is the email response I got back from John: Yes, I have looked at these numbers before and they bounce all over the place. They are good for getting an overall trend, but because of statistical sampling they are a rough gauge of what is happening in the marketplace and one or two numbers do not tell the whole story. The BLS makes some judgment calls on how many people are discouraged and how many retired. With warm regards, John Mauldin Millennium Wave Investments 1000 Ballpark Way, Suite 216 Arlington, TX 76011 817-794-0669 ============================================================ Follow that link back and look at discussion on it Mish