Don't Worry

Right after the attempted assassination of President Reagan a government bureaucrat jumped up on the Washington stage and on national television assured viewers not to worry, he was in charge. That was before the Internet exploded.

Today, it's not a person but a government institution, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But don't worry it's a small change. And we got this covered. Covered up would be a more appropriate term. From what we understand Fed Chair Yellen and the head of the BLS are good friends and both data freaks.

Knowing that we will rest more comfortably tonight.
zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-10/inconvenient-jobs-revisions-obama

Back February 2016, Obama took to the stage at a press conference to boast about job growth and "most importantly" how the stronger job market was "finally starting to translate into bigger paychecks."  He also took the opportunity to jab at Republicans saying the strong jobs data was "inconvenient for Republican stump speeches" as they continued their "doom and despair tour."  Obama's specific comments were:

Most importantly, this progress is finally starting to translate into bigger paychecks.  Over the past six months, wages have grown at their fastest rate since the crisis.  And the policies that I’ll push this year are designed to give workers even more leverage to earn raises and promotions.

So, as I said at my State of the Union address, the United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world.  I know that’s still inconvenient for Republican stump speeches as their doom and despair tour plays in New Hampshire.  I guess you cannot please everybody.

Turns out that revisions to historical real wage growth figures issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics yesterday are actually fairly "inconvenient" for Obama.  Time to get the band back together for a reunion of that "doom and despair" tour. 

In yet another stunning tribute to the "accuracy" and "consistency" of economic propagandadata being reported by our government agencies, the Bureau of Labor Statistics yesterday reported a massive downward revision of the 1Q 2016 YoY real wage growth from +4.2% to -0.4% (a 4.6% swing). 

But we wouldn't worry much about it because the revisions resulted in only "small" changes in the underlying data according to the BLS:

Indexes of all hours-related measures in the business, nonfarm business, and nonfinancial corporate sectors show historical revisions because hours in the base year of 2009 were revised; resulting revisions to percent changes are small.

We guess "small" would be one way to describe a 4.6% swing in YoY real wage growth...we would probably choose something more like "abysmal" or "disastrous" but we're not ones to split hairs.  Revisions to manufacturing wages and durable manufacturing wages were even worse.  Real manufacturing YoY wage growth was revised from +2.8% to -4.3% (a 7.1% swing) while real durable manufacturing YoY wage growth was revised from +1.9% to -5.6% (a 7.5% swing).

See arduous recovery, Joe Biden and Malarkey. financialspuds.blogspot.com/2016/08/malarkey.