Including Philadelphia Fed early benchmark, released today. Several series are below recent peaks, including the early benchmark.
Figure 1: CES Nonfarm payroll (NFP) employment (blue), implied preliminary benchmark (tan), early benchmark (green), implied GS final benchmark (red), CPS series adjusted to NFP concept, 3 month centered moving average (pink), and covered QCEW total employment, seasonally adjusted by author using X-13 (light blue), all in 000’s, s.a. Implied preliminary benchmarks calculated by wedging in the revision between 2024M03 to 2025M03. Source: BLS, Philadelphia Fed, Goldman Sachs, and author’s calculations.
Off topic – European Commission gets DOGEd:
https://www.politico.eu/article/european-commission-unveil-new-structure-ursula-von-der-leyen/
Not as big a deal as DOGE-ing in the U.S., since the EC isn’t as consequential in Europe as the federal government is in the U.S. Any other time, it would be easy to see this as the natural pulse of life for governmental institutions. Nowadays, European devolution seems a likely explanation.
It’s official. The US Attorney for Eastern Virginia has resigned rather follow orders from Trump to illegally prosecute Letitia James. Erik Seibert, a Trump appointee, after a 5-month investigation had determined there were no grounds for prosecuting James. The case was referred to the DOJ by Bill Pulte.
That’s strike two for Bill Pulte — the Cook case fell apart and now the James case. Will we soon see strike three on the Adam Schiff case?
Is this the beginning?
From the BLS today:
The 2024 Consumer Expenditures annual data release scheduled on September 23, 2025, will be rescheduled to a later date. We will update users when more information is available.
No indication of the reason or the future date. Perhaps they just need time to add a line in the survey for Bitcoin.
https://www.bls.gov/cex/notices/2025/ce-2024-reschedule.htm
Not surprising, but certainly worrying.
Not surprising because because of personnel cuts:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/05/economy/cpi-data-bls-reductions
Because of interference with and distraction from the mission:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/doge-software-approval-alarms-labor-department-employees-data-security-rcna191583
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-seeks-to-fire-bureau-of-labor-statistics-director-after-release-of-weak-jobs-report
Because of ill intent and incompetence on the part of its new director:
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/ej-antoni-trumps-pick-lead-bls/story?id=124579471
Depending in which of these is the larger source of delay, the report may simply be late, or it may be a big fat lie. My guess is it’s delayed while little Antoni figures out how best to lie. It’s why he’s there, after all.
I have a thought regarding the big fat lie. It might be Antoni trying to insert his revisionist “model” for inflation and output growth into official statistics:
https://brownstone.org/articles/recession-since-2022-us-economic-income-and-output-have-fallen-overall-for-four-years/
If so, then we can also expect there will be a pre-arranged storm of propaganda in support of his “finding” that the U.S. had been in recession in the final years of the Biden administration, but of course no longer is
But then, if there is any big lie in the offing, we can expect a propaganda storm. Let’s hope the good guys are gathering up evidence for reality in a form that is accessible to non-specialists.
Off topic- the Ig Nobel Prizes for 2025 are out:
https://improbable.com/ig/winners/?amp=1#ig2025
Once again, no prize was granted in economics. The last time an Ig Nobel was handed out for economic research was in 2022, for this beauty:
TALENT VERSUS LUCK: THE ROLE OF RANDOMNESS IN SUCCESS AND FAILURE
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525918500145
From the abstract:
“In particular, our simple agent-based model shows that, if it is true that some degree of talent is necessary to be successful in life, almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success, being overtaken by averagely talented but sensibly luckier individuals.”
Similar things have been discovered in the data by other researchers, for instance here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X20300337
The authors of the Prize-winning paper believe their result “is quantified here for the first time.” I would have to see their definition of “result” to have a an opinion of their claim to originality.