June Jobs Report Hard To Believe

According to the June Establishment Survey, only 18K jobs were added, far below expectations of 105K. Private sector jobs rose only 57K, against an expected 132K, and were very far below the 157K that was predicted by the ADP survey yesterday. Worse still, according to the June Household Survey, jobs fell by more than 500K! A weak employment report might be understandable given that the economy was still suffering from its "soft patch" in June, but bad news of this magnitude—and especially considering the huge variance between the household, establishment, and ADP surveys—must be considered suspect. Sometimes these surveys just go buggy. When they all line up in the same direction, then one can be reasonably confident that the data is somewhat sound. But when they vary by almost 600K, then it's time to take a deep breath and avoid jumping to extreme conclusions.