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Credit Bubble Bulletin/Doug Noland/6-6-2020
“I try to remain laser-focused on the analysis, conscious not to stray into the conspiracy realm. The Fed may buy S&P futures contracts at key market junctures and the government might at times fudge the numbers. I don’t know, and I’m not going there. Some will question the veracity of Friday’s payrolls data. Forecasts were for the May unemployment rate to jump to 19.0%, surging from April’s 14.7%. Private Payrolls were to see a 6.75 million drop, with manufacturing jobs down 400,000. Instead, Private Payrolls surged almost 3.1 million, with manufacturers adding 225,000 workers. The Unemployment rate fell to 13.3%.’”
USAGOLD note 1: Noland, who posted these remarks Saturday, might find himself among the first to question Friday’s employment numbers, but as it turns out he was not alone in sensing that something might be amiss. As pointed out in this morning’s DMR, other analysts and media sources have raised similar concerns.
USAGOLD note 2: Though he shied away from questioning the validity of Friday’s report, Bloomberg opinion columnist Mohammed El Erian in a piece published Saturday does ask how the experts could have been so far off the mark. “Faced with what I suspect is the biggest-ever forecasting error for a single data release,” he says, “the U.S. employment report for May on Friday — the community of applied economists and Wall Street analysts is trying to determine what went wrong in their approach and how this applies to other key projections and policy recommendations.”