The tone of Wednesday’s trading was a bit different than the previous two days. All 3 featured motivation for lower rates/yields from the economic data. But while Wednesday’s data was arguably every bit as friendly as Mon/Tue, bonds weren’t nearly as willing to press their advantage. Now this morning, yields are hesitating to blaze any new trails and instead seem content to circle the wagons ahead of tomorrow’s jobs report.
Today’s only major data was Jobless Claims (not to be confused with tomorrow’s infinitely more important jobs report). At first glance, claims appeared to surge higher. We’ve been dealing with weekly numbers under 200k and now they’re suddenly at 228k. Big weakness in the labor market?!
But wait… The previous week was revised up from 198k to 246k. Evil government manipulation?!
But wait… The Department of Labor recasts its seasonal adjustment factors every year, so maybe it’s not evil manipulation.
But wait… The Department of Labor made revisions in a different manner than they had been, so maybe it is evil manipulation?
But wait… They have a reason:
I’m not going to take the time to read all that and neither should you unless you’re an engineer or a speed reader. The short version is that the pandemic drastically changed labor market trends. We don’t need to understand it in words if we can see it in pictures. The first picture is the baseline pattern in NON-ADJUSTED claims for the past 9 years:
Notice that claims always begin to spike in the fall, peak in January, and decline into March before several sideways to slightly higher months.
Now take a look at how things unfolded in 2021 with claims completely bucking the trend and continuing to drop not only into the summer months, but for the entire remainder of the year:
All that to say, yes, seasonal adjustments really are tricky in 2022-2023. It’s not an evil government manipulation.
