We’ve been saying this since the Obama years, that the US government was seriously fudging numbers to make Obama/Biden look better and Trump look worse. But today’s numbers top the cake.
The US Government claims that Biden gained 467,000 jobs last month. A total that doubles the highest of 78 experts expectations.
The Street reports:
The U.S. economy added far more new jobs than forecast last month, the Labor Department said Friday, with a big revision for its December reading, adding even more fuel to the Federal Reserve’s hawkish outlook on rates and inflation.
The Bureau for Labor Statistics said 467,00 new jobs were created last month, with headline unemployment rate rising from a post-pandemic low to 4%. The January tally was firmly ahead of the Street consensus forecast of 150,000.
The BLS noted that hourly wages were up 0.7% in January, and 5.7% on the year, to $31.63 per hour, with the year-on-year reading coming in well ahead of Street forecasts.
These numbers are crazy when compared to ADP’s report from two days ago showing a loss of (301,000) jobs in January. The BLS numbers today are 768,000 more than ADP’s results. But then again, ADP’s numbers are based on actual jobs data.
Zerohedge reported on the BLS results with skepticism as well.
So much for all those hoping that January payrolls would be a huge miss (due to Omicron or not) and perhaps slow the Fed’s rate hike intentions: moments ago the BLS unleashed a two-for-one shock when it unveiled that not only did January payrolls print at a huge 467K, almost four times higher than the 125K expected (and as a reminder, Goldman expected -250K)…
… but the BLS also revised December payrolls from 199K to 510K. And there’s more: as part of the BLS’s annual revisions, November was revised from 249K to 647K. This means that the previous two months revisions were 709K higher! A quick look at the historical adjustments shows that covid may have never happened with every month rising on average about 500K!
Zerohedge goes on:
The print was a 3-sigma beat relative to expectations. Putting it in context, not a single analyst out of 78 expected a number anywhere close to this and in fact the print came in at double the highest forecast…
And here is BLS explaining that it got the tap on the shoulder:
In accordance with usual practice, the seasonal adjustment models are updated as part of the annual benchmark process. As a result of the updates, there were some large revisions to seasonally adjusted data that mostly offset each other. (See the note at the end of this news release and table A for information about the revisions, the annual benchmark process, and the seasonal adjustment model updates.)
And it gets better: the Household survey showed a gain of 1.2 million jobs in January (from 155.975MM to 157.174MM), as the labor force soared by 1.3 million people, while the number of people not in the labor force plunged by 300K from 99.842MM to 99.516MM.
A final note from Zerohedge:
While it is unclear how credible any of this data is now, it is also worth noting that average hourly earnings also came in far hotter than expected, with average hourly earnings rising 0.7% M/M (more than the expected 0.5%) and 5.7% Y/Y, smashing expectations of 5.2%.
Who trusts this government on anything anymore?
The post SHADES OF OBAMA – January Job Numbers Doubled the Highest Estimate of 78 Experts – And You’re Supposed to Believe This is Real appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
