On the February Jobs Report

This morning’s huge payroll miss, with only 20,000 net payrolls, is likely just plain wrong, and we expect it to get revised away. It is the biggest disparity in five years versus the consensus, and versus an array of contemporaneous objective labor market data. It is contradicted by the “household survey” that showed 255,000 new jobs, or 325,000 on a “payroll basis.” Bad weather explains 143,000 fewer jobs than usual in February, but it remains a mystery why weather would not have been included in the consensus or other contemporaneous data.