On the August Jobs Report, and Our 2020 Election Model

A modest beat versus consensus, more so given small downward revisions to prior months. Today’s payrolls were inflated by 238,000 temporary census workers, but presumably that was in the consensus. This datapoint gives Trump 53 additional electoral college votes in our quantitative election model, which now forecasts he will win by a margin of 355. That’s a cushion he will need as personal income growth slows in Q3-2020. Today’s labor market looks a lot like 2012’s, except then it was after three painful years of “Nike swoosh” recovery, and now it’s been just three months of a “V.”