Bragging About Census Hiring Starts Already; I'll Take The Under

Fresh on the heels of a snow job where Bernanke warned economists to disregard effects that did not happen (and anyone doing any semblance of research should have known would not happen) we now see media trumpeting up census hiring as if it was not temporary.

In case you missed the snow job analysis please see ...

• Range of Snow Impact on Jobs: Negligible to 220,000; Have Your Snow Job Decoder Ring Handy?


• Jobs Contract By 36,000; Unemployment Rate Steady At 9.7%; No Snow Effect

Having expected to see job losses up to 220,000 in last Friday's report, economists have now gone the other direction trumpeting part-time census jobs that will vanish by June or July.

Census Hiring Hype

Please consider this unthinking headline Obama Job Losses May Turn on 300,000 March Payrolls.

The U.S. may add as many as 300,000 jobs in March, the most in four years, setting the stage for what some economists say will be sustained employment gains.

Better weather, hiring of temporary government workers and a growing economy may bring the biggest job increases since March 2006, said David Greenlaw, chief fixed-income economist at Morgan Stanley in New York. The rise would be the second since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

February payrolls dropped by 36,000, the Labor Department reported last week, depressed in part by East Coast snowstorms that closed many businesses. Excluding the effects of the weather and the hiring of government workers to conduct the 2010 Census, payrolls would have climbed by about 100,000, Greenlaw said today in a Bloomberg Radio interview.

“If you get a plus 100,000 number again in March, then you’d be talking about a headline reading of a little bit better than 300,000 when you factor in the weather bounce-back and the census effect,” he said.

Mish Comment: Hello Greenlaw - Is the headline all this is important? Does the fact that all of these jobs will vanish by June mean anything?

The February drop in payrolls was smaller than the 68,000 median decline forecast by economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before the March 5 report. The jobless rate, which hasn’t increased since October, held at 9.7 percent, even as more people entered the workforce.

Mish Comment: Go figure. Bernanke trumped up the affect of snow and economists upped their job loss estimates to ridiculous levels, some over 200,000. I called this in advance, as the above links show.

“We expect a sharp snapback in March payrolls as well,” said Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York, the most accurate forecaster in a Bloomberg News survey in December. He didn’t give a specific estimate.

Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York, said in a March 6 e-mail to customers that he anticipates payrolls this month will climb by about 275,000. About 50,000 of that represents the “underlying trend” in employment, he said, with about 100,000 attributable to the weather and another 125,000 to the census.

Mish Comment: Even after analysis shows that snow had no effect, economists are attributing 100,000 jobs to snow.

Joseph LaVorgna is more upbeat about the employment outlook, anticipating payroll gains averaging about 300,000 for the next three to four months.

“We have overcut inventories, we have overcut capital spending and we have overcut jobs,” said LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York. A March payroll gain of as much as 450,000 “can’t be ruled out,” he said, and further increases are “going to convince people of the sustainability and durability of the recovery.”

“We could easily see” 300,000 jobs added this month, Brian Wesbury, chief economist at First Trust Portfolios in Wheaton, Illinois, said today in a Bloomberg Radio interview. “I don’t expect to see consistent gains of that size, but clearly March could be that number.”

I'll Take The Under

“We have overcut inventories, we have overcut capital spending and we have overcut jobs,” said LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York. A March payroll gain of as much as 450,000 “can’t be ruled out,” he said, and further increases are “going to convince people of the sustainability and durability of the recovery.”

Even if by some miracle we see 450,000 jobs in March, they will all vanish by June. Not one of those quoted in the article above mentioned either of these points

1. These jobs are part-time
2. They will be gone by June or July

Economist clowns were wrong about snow last month, and now they are massively wrong in the other direction, confusing part time, temporary hiring with a sustainable recovery.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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