So "wall street" makes up a number. Sees a higher number from BLS and then says, "Hurrah! We should invest, no wait. We are counting on the feds to buy more stocks and bonds. What a glorious day!"
Really? The wolves in charge of the henhouse are making low ball predictions and then celebrating when it comes in higher?
“Wall Street” in this case is “consensus estimate” of hundreds of economists. Some of them work for Wall Street firms. Some of them work for companies (FDX has a chief economist). Some of them work for universities. NASDAQ and NYSE have economists. It’s not a bunch of traders “making up numbers” and it’s averaged to smooth out the variances in forecasting methodologies.
As someone who does forecasting for a living, the one thing I always know for sure about my forecast is that it’s wrong.