Am I missing something? Numerous commentators appear anxious about a looming government shutdown – not because air travel might be disrupted or the poor souls now tasked with applying duties on a gazillion small packages from overseas (I already miss the de minimis exemption!) might be furloughed.
No, it appears a lot of otherwise sentient adults are worried we may not get Friday’s jobs reports on time.
Okay, it is true there are a lot of questions about the employment picture currently, and I know we all hang on every syllable that falls from the mouth of Jay Powell, however misguided those mumblings have proven to be. But, the jobs report?
I am in the camp that we have no idea how valid the next BLS jobs information will be or whether we should take it seriously. This has nothing to do with the pending installation of E.J. Antoni, who was nominated to be chief number-cruncher after Trump fired Erika McEntarfer. (The Left is up in arms that Antoni, who worked at the Heritage Foundation, should be trusted with the sacred task of collecting the employment surveys. Antoni is a good guy, smart and will do just fine, guaranteed.) McEntarfer deserved to be axed; response rates to the surveys deteriorated under her watch and to my knowledge she did zip about it.
Rather, my skepticism stems from the repeated, huge revisions to the jobs tallies that the BLS has issued nearly every month. Remember that in August last year the BLS issued a downward adjustment for the 12 months ended in March 2024 of 818,000, which was subsequently revised to down 598,000. Then came this year’s downward revision – of 911,000 – for the year ending March 2025. On top of that, more recent reports were also “corrected”; employment in June and July combined was 21,000 lower than previously reported.
These are head-spinning revisions; in light of them, it’s hard to imagine that investors will take the upcoming report as “gold standard” data, as CNBC recently described the BLS reports.
Much more important, especially for any long-term investor (the few that are left), were comments made by Walmart’s CEO recently, where he acknowledged that AI was going to impact nearly every job on earth. He said his firm’s employment level should hold steady this year and for the next several years as the company offloads more work to AI.
This, folks, is the biggest story of our time, encapsulated by the biggest private employer in the land, and one that policy makers appear intent on ignoring. We are going to face a serious erosion in job creation, and I have no idea what we’ll do about it.
