(Or, ” I have in my hand fifty-seven cases of individuals…”) At 3:44 into this video, this Ms. DiMartino Booth makes this assertion, claiming this is the reason we haven’t seen a recession in the data pre-election.
She further argues that left-leaning government statisticians artificially put employment numbers up (so that the preliminary benchmark revision and then eventual benchmark revision would be downward). This is a testable hypothesis: it suggests that revisions would be downward when Democrats are seeking to hold presidential power again, and upward when Democrats are seeking to take the White House. Does the data on preliminary benchmarks conform to his hypothesis? Short answer: No.
Here is a graph of preliminary benchmark revisions since 2007.
Figure 1: Preliminary benchmark revisions to nonfarm payroll employment, in ppts (blue). Pink arrows indicate observations consistent with hypothesis that government statisticians at BLS bias CES NFP numbers in favor Democrats. Source: BLS, and individual year BLS preliminary benchmark revision releases.
Notice that of the last five elections, only two conform to the DiMartino Booth hypothesis. If the Deep (Statistical) State were so pervasive, I would’ve expected a better batting average (and, wouldn’t it have been better to have the preliminary benchmark be close to reported, only to have the benchmark (i.e., final) show the “correct” number.
See also my assessment of similar charges made by EJ Antoni.
Personally, I can’t remember the last time the labor theory of value came up in a discussion of Fisher ideal price indices…
For completeness’s sake, note that Ms. DiMartino Booth think job destruction in the private sector started in “early 2024”, although in a August 2024 interview, she indicated a recession start to be backdated to October 2023.
Addendum:
At 10:10 in the video, DiMartino Booth places the recession’s start at April 2024. Taking that as the peak, I have redrawn the NBER BCDC key variables normalized to 2024M04=0 (in logs).
Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll (NFP) employment from CES (blue), NFP Bloomberg consensus from 12/4 (teal +), civilian employment (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold light green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), consumption in Ch.2017$ (light blue), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log normalized to 2024M04=0. Source: BLS via FRED, Federal Reserve, BEA 2024Q3 2nd release, S&P Global Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (12/2/2024 release), and author’s calculations.
Note the employment data — even from nongovernmental source ADP, as Macroduck notes — are trending up.
Figure 2: Nonfarm Payroll (NFP) employment from CES (blue), from implied preliminary benchmark (orange), Philadelphia Fed early benchmark (light green), from CPS adjusted to NFP concept (black), private NFP from ADP-Stanford Digital Economic Lab (pink), all in logs 2024M04=0. Source: BLS, ADP via FRED, BLS, Philadelphia Fed, and author’s calculations.
no doubt a prized student of either rick stryker or econned.
Ms. DiMartino Booth operates at a market-newsletter level of thinking – not a comiment. That’s probably because she is a purveyor of market newsletters.
Things to note:
– The sponsors of the conference at which DiMartino Booth spoke feed on gold-bug investors.
– The assertion that “those other guys are politically motivated” is just another example of “every accusation is an admission”; DiMartino Booth’s own publications drip with political bias.
– The sample newsletter from DiMartino Booth’s website bounces from claiming that consumers are strong to claiming they are indentured to warning of revolution:
https://quillintelligence.com/the-weekly-quill-sample-the-u-s-consumer-is-strong/
This is the bread-and-butter of gold-bug marketing. And, by the way, DiMartino Booth seems perfectly willing to publish the output of government statisticians without question when that output serves her interests.
Next.
On her web page she bills herself as “a global thought leader”.
So there, take that, Dr. Chinn!
ADP (not government statisticians) counts 146,000 new private sector jobs in November. All broad sectors other than manufacturing added jobs.
Challenger, Gray and Christmas reports 57,727 layoff announcements in November, the highest of any November since 2020. That’s not comforting, but Challenger data can get wobbly toward year-end. Firms sometimes sweep layoffs into a single year-end announcement. We know that the tech and auto sectors have been cutting jobs, and that’s mostly where Challenger reports announcements in November and for the year so far.
Off topic – How stupid are we? Climate-change edition:
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/experiencing-natural-disasters-increases-partisan-disagreement-climate-change
A new study from the Centre for Economic Policy Research finds that partisan beliefs about climate change become more divided for those who have suffered a climate-related disaster.
Here’s the setup:
“…in 2001, 48% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats in the US believed that the effects of climate change had already begun. Today, only 29% of Republicans share this belief, compared to 82% of Democrats…”
And here are the studies results:
“After experiencing a disaster, liberal respondents display an increase in their concerns about climate change of around 1.4–2.6 percentage points relative to their pre-disaster level. Meanwhile, conservative respondents’ concerns for climate change decrease by 2.5–2.6 percentage points. These changes…represent a widening of the partisan gap by around 11%. We do not find similar divergence in views on policy issues other than climate change and the environment, and…rule out differential reactions by socioeconomic characteristics…such as income or age…”
So evidence matters less than tribal affiliation. That’s how stupid we are.
Off topic – How stupid is she? Tulsa Gabbard flunks the test:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/gabbards-views-russia-shaped-part-kremlin-propaganda-outlet/story?id=116430097
Trump’s nominee to become the Director of National Intelligence is a routine consumer and purveyor of Russian propaganda. The term “stooge” is showing up in the press.
Four down?
So the retort when someone threatens your authority is:
Oh yeah? Yoon what army?
Another good jobs report under Biden – 227,000 new jobs, another 56,000 in upward revisions, average hourly earnings up 0.4% and 4% over the past year (well above inflation) and the unemployment at 4.2% -Since 1989 52 million jobs have been created in America. 50 million, 96%, have been created under Democratic Presidents while 1.9 million under Bushes and Trump. Dems provide responsible governance and Rs provide tax cuts for billionaires. I think Biden is now in 4th place for months of continuous job creation. All I have seen under Republicans is tax cuts for wealthy and speculative bubbles in some asset class and recessions – let’s see how Rs do – although they are desperate to talk down the Biden economy – which had the largest wage gains going to working class in several decades.
I will also point out that the last major pandemic in the United States occurred under the watch of a republican president. my guess is there is a 50% chance of another pandemic during the next 4 years. Biden was penalized for cleaning up the trump pandemic mess. will democrats be penalized for cleaning up another mess in 4 years?
New revision from Philly Fed:
“ Over the cumulative three-quarter period
ending with this 2024 Q2 vintage — which
includes additional QCEW data changes
affecting the prior quarters — payroll jobs
in the 50 states and the District of Columbia
grew 0.8 percent.”
GDP revision end of January!