The jobs report shows why the White House should stop touting its 'economic miracle'

[Zorro]

Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for this White House to stop selectively celebrating really noisy or possibly-anomalous-to-the-point-of-meaninglessness statistics. Especially ones that can easily reverse themselves, as we saw happen Friday.

A month ago, the Trump administration was crowing about an unusually good jobs report: More than 300,000 jobs were added in January, way above trend. (Job growth has averaged about 200,000 for the past several years.) This crazy-high number was evidence, the president declared, of the “economic miracle” he was overseeing.

As the White House elaborated in a news release at the time: “President Trump has delivered on his promise to reignite the American economy and usher in a new economic boom.” Job growth was “smashing expectations.”

Those who follow the Labor Department’s monthly jobs reports — as I have now for more than a decade — know they are extremely noisy. That is, they bounce around a ton from month to month, and the margin of error in the payroll jobs number is plus or minus about 115,000. So, way above-trend numbers for one month could be the start of a new “miracle” boom, but they are more likely to be an aberration that could quickly reverse itself. Which is why hailing one month of unusually strong growth (or alternatively, mourning one month of unusually weak growth) is always risky.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/08/jobs-report-shows-why-white-house-should-stop-touting-its-economic-miracle

[Hoyt]

1. Or as the article points out, it's risky to think things won't change next month. Every time we

we cheer the stock market dropping, it goes back up.

IMO, we are probably more likely to go into November 2020 with relatively low unemployment, wages finally increasing a bit, etc. So we better find other ways to counter trump, or we'll look like perpetual complainers (not that there aren't good reasons to complain).

[MichMan]

2. Don't understand why some here cheer stock market drops

Why would people celebrate people's retirement funds going down in value anyway ?

[Hoyt]

3. I guess if it hurts trump and he loses, we'll all be better off. But I agree, it hurts a lot of

decent people and a recession usually hurts the poor first and worse than anyone else. But trump does claim he's responsible for all the good stuff and Obama, fake news, Hispanics, other minorities or Democrats in general are responsible for all the bad stuff.

[masmdu]

4. Shorts create profits as well and can be held in retirement accounts