Recruiter’s View

The BLS did some in-your-face editing to conjure up astonishing payroll reports.  

Anyone using their headline numbers was wildly mistaken. 

Actual data was horrible.  The amazing part was how those numbers were conjured up. 

It wasn’t any show of initiative that caused me to open the ADP payroll report for January.
It was just sitting there, in my in-box. 

I cling to simple analysis, like “Up is good” and “Down is bad.”

Good things happen when payroll numbers are high and climbing.
Bad things happen when they are low and falling.
Bizarre things happen when they both occur at the same time. 

I made some notes, trying to figure out what was happening…

Version One – ADP

9:44 a.m. (ET) Wednesday, February 2, 2022

ADP released ugly payroll numbers for January.  Total Non-Farm Private Employment is down 301,000 jobs.  Forecasts had expected to add 200,000, so that’s a miss of a half million jobs.  

Compared to December’s +807,000, January was off by more than a million jobs.
Every sector was negative, except Natural Resources & Mining, up 4,000. 

Version Two – BLS

8:30 a.m. (ET) Friday, February 4, 2022

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was pleased to announce another solid payroll performance.  “Total non-farm payroll employment rose by 467,000 in January…”

The Employment Situation Summary explained, “Employment growth continued in leisure and hospitality, in professional and business services, in retail trade, and in transportation and warehousing.”

What good fortune.  Everything is up.  And the payroll numbers beat all expectations, more than doubling the highest forecast. 

ADP v. BLS

To summarize, ADP said January payrolls cratered.  The actual number reported was negative 301,000.  

BLS said payrolls grew by 467,000 in January. 

That’s a 768,000 difference of opinion.

How is that possible?

Revisionist Magic 

If you’re the sort of person who actually reads these publications, then you might stumble on a section called, “Revisions to Establishment Survey Data.”

That’s where they state “large revisions” were made.  They didn’t even hide it.

Massive numbers were shoved around, month after month, year after year. 

Adjustments were adjusted and readjusted, going back through 2017, and even before. 

And, wouldn’t you know?  Five years of re-writes, and January’s numbers come in looking pretty darned good.

Recruiter’s View 

I’ll take the ADP report as the more reliable picture of reality. 

I’m betting BLS is BS… mischief with an extra helping of excuses. 

In January, we saw downtime caused by illness, weather, and product shortages.  Thousands of firings or extended layoffs were mandated through brutal Jab or Job “vaccine” policies. 

The damage was substantial. 

My guess is, real job numbers were absolutely down.

Given a second guess, I’d say we’re coming up on mid-term elections.  What better time to re-write five years of data?

Public patience for being miserable is visibly ending.
And that’s a plus.

We are still capable of getting back to work.

-TD