Thursday, September 11, 2025
There's a lot of BS and fear-mongering being circulated about the preliminary total nonfarm payrolls benchmark revision of -911,000 from two days ago
It all betrays an inability to think.
Bloomberg here said:
... The number of workers on payrolls will likely be revised down by a record 911,000, or 0.6%, according to the government’s preliminary benchmark revision out Tuesday. The final figures are due early next year. ...
No, it's not at all likely.
It's a preliminary number for crying out loud, the size of which reflects more on the increasing difficulty BLS is having gathering the monthly data in more or less real time than it does on the data itself.
Bloomberg then followed that up with a scary chart of previous preliminary benchmark revision estimates, as if those represented reality, too. And then people who should know better repeated the scary chart.
This story went particularly hysterical about it: The BLS Hallucinated a Million Jobs. The Fed Can't Fix This.
But we've known since February what the BLS really thinks the final numbers are, in thousands, and all these irresponsible sources just leave that out, because . . . clicks:
2024: -598, not -818
2023: -187, not -306
2022: +506, not +462
2021: -7, not -166
2020: -121, not -173
2019: -489, not -501
2018: -16, not +43
2017: +135, not +95
2016: -81, not -150
2015: -172, not -208.
But what does it all mean, Bertie?
Over ten years BLS is saying it overestimated in its regular monthly total nonfarm payrolls reports by a net 1.03 million jobs, not by 1.722 million as in the preliminary benchmark revision reports.
The reality's not even 9,000 jobs a month too many, in a payroll universe where nearly 160 million people are working, but I'm supposed to be scared because they thought it might have been more like an overestimate of 14,000 a month?
C'mon, man.
They're doing a damn good job at BLS, and it's time more people said "thank you" for a change.
If you want to politicize the February benchmark data, they show Biden's record over four years had a net 286,000 fewer jobs in reality, but Trump I had 491,000 fewer.
But you won't hear that from this flock of idiots.
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
The suspect previously reported in custody in the Charlie Kirk assassination has been released
What in the hell is going on in Utah?
The shooter is still at large.
Housing affordability is up for a second year in a row in 2024, which is better than a sharp stick in the eye
Housing affordability hit a record low 17.22% in 2022.
That is to say, median household income bought 17.22% of the median sales price of a house sold in the United States in 2022.
The 2024 figure is 19.98%, which is just a little lower than in 2013, when it was 20.12%. Affordability also is about where it was in the middle of the Bush 43 administration, the height of the previous housing bubble.
As you can plainly see, houses were much more affordable in the 1990s, and even more affordable before that. It's a picture of declining affordability overall since then.
Housing did get briefly more affordable in 2009 . . . when 5.5 million people lost their jobs and completed foreclosures were on their way to 6+ million.
Median household income in this data is updated but once a year, and for 2024 that was yesterday.
Core producer prices, not seasonally adjusted, were up 2.827% year over year in today's report for August 2025
The climb-down from last month's report for July 2025 at 3.655% year over year was YUGE.
The numbers have been quite volatile for the last four months.
In today's release, the yoy numbers for Nov 2024 through Mar 2025 remain unchanged from last month's report. The five month average of these for the yoy increase in core wholesale prices has been 3.711%.
Last month the average for April through July came in lower, at 3.144% year over year, but that has now been revised even lower in this month's report, by 2%, to 3.081% yoy.
Combined with the fresh August reading at 2.827% yoy, clearly the trend for the rate increases has been lower overall.
But these levels are far higher than the average 1.629% which prevailed 2012-2020 inclusive. Our new lower August reading is a rate still nearly 74% higher than that.
The wholesale price environment remains highly inflationary compared with the pre-pandemic era.
Thanks to Trump/Vance appeasement of Putin, NATO ally Poland is starting to look just like Ukraine
Poland says it shot down Russian drones that violated its airspace during attack on Ukraine
The Polish military accused Moscow of an "act of aggression" early Wednesday. The incident marked a first for a NATO member state since the Kremlin invaded its neighbor.
Poland said a number of Russian drones entered its airspace during an attack on Ukraine early Wednesday and were shot down with the help of NATO allies, a first since Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbor. ... Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his country was dealing with "a large-scale provocation,” and that his military recorded 19 drone incursions overnight, four of which he said were shot down. ... The E.U. called it the “most serious European airspace violation by Russia since the war began.” ...
Tuesday, September 9, 2025
The Wall Street Journal: Just 35% of high school seniors in 2024 were proficient in reading, and only 22% in math
... Twelfth-graders’ average math score was the worst since the current test began in 2005, and reading was below any point since that assessment started in 1992. The share of 12th-graders who were proficient slid by 2 percentage points between 2019 and 2024—to 35% in reading and 22% in math. ...
More.
And they can vote.
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