In a few days the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its monthly jobs situation report for February. This segment of What’s Ahead reveals why it shouldn’t be taken as gospel truth.
Most people don’t know that the headline numbers on jobs created (or lost) and on unemployment are seasonally adjusted to reflect seasonal patterns of hiring and firing. Observers were shocked when the BLS reported that 517,000 jobs were created in January, particularly as evidence of a slowing economy is growing. Actually, without the seasonal adjustments, 2.5 million jobs were lost. BLS models calculated that post-holiday firings should have come in at 3 million.
But BLS models may well have been upended by the enormous distortions wrought by the pandemic lockdowns.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2023/02/28/why-februarys-jobs-report-should-be-taken-with-a-big-grain-of-salt/