Courtesy of Mish.
Watching the Wrong Things
Many market watchers have their eye on jobs and the unemployment rate as the determinant of when the Fed will hike.
Let's investigate the wisdom of that approach with actual data.
I downloaded seasonally adjusted employment and jobs data for the last five recessions from the BLS. Because the recessions start in different months, use of seasonally adjusted data is mandatory for this exercise.
My focus is on jobs and employment in the period three months prior to the recession to three months after the recession.
I used the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) report on US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions as the official arbiter as to when recessions begin.
Jobs are from the Establishment Survey. Employment is from the Household Survey. Results are similar.
