The Payroll Numbers Won’t Prevent Economic Growth From Softening
Continuing Unemployment Claims
Universal Value Advisors
Employment was the big story of the week with headline Payroll Employment rising +943K Seasonally Adjusted (SA). The consensus estimate was +870K, so, apparently, a big beat. But, looking beneath the surface reveals that this isn’t quite what, at first blush, it appears to be.
Since the pandemic began, we have held the view that the Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) data present a truer picture than do the SA. The pandemic’s distortions haven’t been in the data long enough to show any seasonality, and we don’t expect those distortions to have seasonality in the first place. (Example: Do the mutations occur in a seasonal pattern?)
The NSA Payroll number was -133K. Yes, with a negative sign. That’s over a one million difference. That doesn’t mean the payroll number was weak, because it is normal for July to show about a -1 million…
