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Thursday, March 28, 2024

The Truth About BLS “Period 13” Adjustments – In 72 Years, Just 5 Positive Revisions

Courtesy of Tyler Durden

Much has been said about the BLS’ massaging of numbers, both on Zero Hedge and elsewhere. And while last week took the cake in weather apologists coming out of the woodwork for the major miss, everyone was happy to take point out that the unemployment number was down. As we noted this was entirely due to the ongoing collapse in the labor force and due to the surge in disenchanted workers who are looking for jobs, yet are no longer being counted. Yet what could possibly be the biggest tell in the BLS tendentious spin of data comes courtesy of the BLS “period 13” data reporting, which is the full year adjustment the BLS gives at the end of every single year (it can be pulled from BLS data series CEU0000000001). And as John Poehling shows after parsing the data, in 72 years, there have been just 5 positive adjustments. And curiously, of these 5, the two largest ones by a huge margin occurred in the prior 2 years: 2008 and 2009, when year end adjustments (subsequently revised lower in the interim) added a total of 2.2 million jobs for the current administration. In 2010 there was no such luck, as the period 13 revision took out 1,243,000 jobs from the running total. The bottom line: the average adjustments from 1939 to 2010 is a negative 1,447,000. So why does anyone put any faith in the BLS numbers again please? And a better question: why pretend any economic data matters any more? After all, everything ends up being crushed following final adjustments. As usual – the only thing that does matter, and has over the past 30 years, is how much free money can the Fed pump into the market. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

h/t John Poehling

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