[agere_contra]

I wouldn't trust that 165K figure.

According to the BLS website 193K jobs were added to the NFP by the "Net Birth/Death Adjustment".

This is a theoretical adjustment made to account for all the new job-creating businesses that appeared in the last month and which otherwise wouldn't appear in the figures.

This adjustment makes sense - sort of - when the economy is booming. But we can't add 193K (!) to the figures and then claim that the economy is doing well just because +165K is pretty strong.

We have to remember that BLS figures in the 21st century are basically the most tortured State statistics on earth - at any rate since the USSR stopped reporting wheat production. They're maybe 1% actual data and 99% unaudited adjustments. They're so mangled: they're really only useful for supporting the Government's agenda.

[Wyatt's Torch]

Which is why I posted it relative to long-run averages. There are birth/death adjustments every period. But over the long run the methodology is the same. Look at the NFP graphs. The market has improved substantially since the bottom in 2009-10. We aren't back to peak numbers of employed (2007-08 bubble) but well above the prior cycle (pre-2001 recession) highs.