If you’ve never heard of the Revelio Public Labor Statistics, don’t worry: The data wasn’t widely discussed in macro-market circles until last month. Even now, after two missing NFP releases, it’s not getting as much attention as Revelio Labs doubtlessly thinks it should.
Revelio essentially tries to replicate the BLS’s monthly jobs report using individual-level data from more than 100 million online professional profiles. Suffice to say it’s an alternative dataset. In the absence of the government’s hiring tally, macro watchers will take what they can get, but traders probably won’t put much stock (figuratively or literally) in the numbers.
With that preamble, Thursday’s update from Revelio suggested the US economy lost 9,057 jobs on net last month.
If the revisions which accompanied the October tally are indicative of how Revelio normally adjusts this series, I’m not sure how useful it is. Every month was revised going back years and some of the revisions were enormous.
I should add a caveat to account for the fact that I haven’t endeavored to understand that revision process. All I know is that when I refreshed the spreadsheet on Thursday, the chart looked quite a bit different than it did before, even if the general trajectory remained intact. Apologies to Revelio if I’ve mischaracterized the adjustment process.
Anyway, the breakdown shows the net job loss for October was attributable entirely to a 22,200 reduction in government payrolls, which was offset by a 22,000 gain in education and health services. That’s eminently plausible: Russ Vought’s laying people off and education and health services tends to be an acyclical category.
September’s 60,100 gain was revised to show a 33,000 net addition. Adding up revisions going back to June, you get -238,300. That’s, um, quite an adjustment, but to be fair, the BLS’s figures are increasingly prone to outsized revisions as well. Just ask Donald Trump, who fired bureau chief Erika McEntarfer in connection with those adjustments.
I’d suggest the Revelio figures, the ADP beat and Thursday morning’s disconcerting Challenger report (i.e., this week’s trio of US labor market updates) net out to a relatively glum, but not yet overtly dour, read on the US jobs market ahead of the holiday season.
The fact is, the ADP release is the most tradable among those three reports, and it was somewhat constructive under the circumstances. Much as I think the Revelio and Challenger figures are painting the more accurate picture at this particular juncture, the benefit of the doubt has to go to ADP. At least for now.
