NY Fed, St. Louis Fed, GS tracking:
Figure 1: GDP as reported (black), May Survey of Professional Forecasters (tan), GDPNow of 6/18 (light blue square), NY Fed of 6/20 (chartreuse +), St Louis Fed News (green circle), Goldman Sachs of 6/20 (red triangle), all in bn. ch.2017$ SAAR. Source: BEA 2025Q1 2nd release, Philadelphia Fed, Atlanta Fed, NY Fed, St. Louis Fed, Goldman Sachs, and author’s calculations.
Does this mean we’re going to begin denying degrees to students who speak out against bombing Iran?:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-monitor-iran-backed-cells-trump-weighs-strikes/
The Philadelphia Fed issued its early benchmark report for Q4 on Friday, and I note with considerable concern that without any explanation they no longer included a calculation of the seasonally adjusted national gain or loss in employment based on the QCEW.
The report includes the following disclaimer at the end:
“The estimate of U.S. employment obtained from the sum of our EB state estimates is not designed nor intended to be an accurate measure of national employment. Moreover, the BLS routinely warns that because of statistical limitations, it “does not compile a ‘sum-of-states’ employment series and cautions users that such a series is subject to a relatively large and volatile error structure.” This caveat also applies to our EB series.”
But this is not an adequate explanation, because all previous reports included nearly identical disclaimers. And frankly, the series is of not much use except to the extent it can be used to estimate what seasonally adjusted QCEW gains or losses are likely to be.
The report does estimate that 10 States + DC had significantly lower employment gains than reported in the NFP reports, while 1 State was significantly higher. The rest of the results were not significant.
Despite this, a count of all 51 jurisdictions shows that 10 States were higher than reported, 2 had no change, and 38 States plus DC were lower than reported. This certainly suggests that once the QCEW data is incorporated, Q4 will show markedly fewer payroll gains than presently reported.
I attempted to “back-door” a national estimate based on the Q1 through Q3 Philadelphia Fed reports, compared with the QCEW report that payrolls grew only 0.8% for the entire year of 2024. My calculations indicate a Q1 gain of 0.57%, followed by a Q2 decline of 0.02%, and a Q3 gain of 0.23%. That suggests a Q4 gain of only 0.02%, or 29,000 jobs gained in the entire quarter, far less than the 628,000 presently reported.
Alternatively, if I start with the QCEW’s reported YoY gain of 1.0% through September 2024, which would be 157,897,000 jobs vs. NFP’s 158,314,000; and then calculate a 0.8% YoY gain from December 2023’s 156,930,000 number, that gives me a Q4 gain of 288,000 jobs.
Either form of calculation suggests that job growth through Q4 of last year was much less robust than presently reported. I am sure others can do a better job of deriving a national number from the Early Benchmark’s State by State calculation than I have done.
But to reiterate, especially with the assault on reliable data by this Administration, I think the Philadelphia Fed owes us an explanation for why they dropped their national calculations.
OK, stupid me! It dawned on me after I wrote my first comment to check the underlying data included separately by the Philadelphia Fed, rather than just relying on the report.
A little tedious, but each jurisdiction’s seasonally adjusted change in employment for the quarter is listed to the nearest 100. Summing all 51 gave me a gain of 246,300 jobs in Q4 last year, vs. the official NFP number of 628,000.
Off topic – tariffs and inflation:
https://www.kff.org/quick-take/tariffs-are-driving-2026-health-insurance-premiums-up/
Turns out, tariffs push up thecost of services, as well as goods. Health insurance companies are announcing to regulators that they expect to pay more for drugs and medical equipment, which are mostly imported, and so will charge higher premia next year.
We just committed an act of war in Iran. The felon-in-chief did not offer a clear explanation of how he intends to proceed before the fact. His willingness to ignore intelligence assessments, his poor grasp of detail, his refusal to dothe intellectual work required for picy-making, all suggest that we may not have a clear plan. Bombing for the sake of bombing may be all that has happened.
The U.S. has engaged in some pretty stupid activities in the Middle East in the past, but has at least attempted to build diplomatic support for our actions before hand. This time, we have joined a rogue nation in an unjustified war, without international support, and without any serious effortto build support.
Yes, that war is against another rogue nation, but war inevitability does great harm to innocents, so war without justification, without obvious benefit, is as immoral as anything a country can engage in.
The guy who wanted a tank parade for his birthday just bombed highly radioactive facilities in a country we were not at war with – contrary to international law, contrary to his own campaign promises to avoid war, without consulting Congress, and without provocation. That’s who we are now.
Off topic – thoughts on the legal foundation for the felon-in-chief’s order to bomb Iran:
Looks like there is none. We’re talking war crimes here, as well as violations of U.S. law and the Constitution.
Article 15 of Additional Protocol II of the 1949 Geneva Convention states:
“Works or installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even where these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.”
The Geneva Convention was ratified by the U.S. Senate, and so is the law of the land.
It is so far a matter of speculation whether the U.S. bombing of nuclear facilities at Isfahan, Fordo and Natanz will lead to radioactive fallout. So far, Iran claims no radiation has been released. Let’s hope that is, and remains, the case. It was far from assured that fallout could be avoided before the fact, when the felon-in-chief gave the order.
In addition, the IAEA General Conference has declared that attacks against peaceful nuclear installations are prohibited under the following solutions: GC(XXVII)/RES/407 (1983); GC(XXIX)/RES/444 (1984); and GC(XXIX)/765/Rev.1 (1985).
So the felon violated international law when he ordered the bombing. He also violated the Constitution (Article One, Section 8) and the War Powers Act.
One more little thing about the Big Bloated Budget Bill – land transfers to oligarchs and a bonanza of negative externalities:
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/senate-gop-public-lands
The Bloated Bill just keeps turning up travesties, meant to go unnoticed until it’s too late.
Great land distributions have historic consequences. During the French Revolution, peasants were made land owners, and small-holders became the backbone of the middle class and a political force to be reckoned with. New South Wales was populated due to land grants, as were Western Australia and Tasmania, to a less degree. Ireland’s “troubles” and famine have their origin in the creation of Irish Plantations, the grant of Irish lands to Cromwell’s supporters. Homestead Acts in the U.S. gave land west of the Mississippi to small land owners, as opposed to creating large estates for slave holders – the end of U.S. slavery followed. When the Soviet Union fell and Russia state assets were “privatized” in what was described as a “big bang”, Russia became an oligarchy.
Senate Republicans are attempting to legislate the transfer of public land into the hands of a group of pseudo-libertarian billionaires, with the added gift of a suspension of law and government regulation in those lands.
Aside from enriching the rich through the transfer of land, this scheme would disadvantage any enterprise operating outside the new, lawless territories. Sickening the land, water, air and people of vast swaths of territory is bad enough, but the additional cost is to burden everyone outside those territories with unfair competition.
The natural reaction is for those under this burden to call for equal treatment, an erosion of environmental, safety and social protections. What the rich, Randite creators of this scheme claim is that they are running a grand demonstration project. In reality, they are running a grand scheme to spill negative externalities on the rest of us, negative externalities that government oversight is meant to prevent. This public subsidy of the rich is the nose of a diseased camel.