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Guy Berger

lines on the record: 66
first: 2025-08-13
most recent: 2025-08-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Awesome. Thanks for So I have a sub stack that's called macromosley substack.com, also active on LinkedIn. I'm active on Twitter, Blue Sky, LinkedIn. Yeah, those are the places to go. And then occasionally, you know, if you're cracking open the journal or New York Times or listening to marketplace, you may hear me pop up.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And if the labor market doesn't say concern for the worse, the amount of easing that's going to happen is going to be small. Because again, this isn't, you know, you would really would need a sharp deterioration in the labor market or a big improvement in inflation to allow rates to move a lot like policy rates to move a lot. Like it's just like you might get some token easing to move a little bit more toward neutral, but not more than that until the data clearly improves. Even that might not happen.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That looks like a sector that's actually experiencing renewed reheating because I'm guessing they just have fewer, they rely on immigrant labor, both documented non-documented. And that taps have been turned off. So could this be eventually big enough to move the labor market in the direction? I think you should definitely consider that possibility. There are other sectors where this won't be relevant because they don't really rely on immigrant labor and all they're suffering from is their sector being squeezed by tariffs or by high interest rates. So my feeling is like I'm not a Fed guy. I always like have to think about it. People that are listening to us probably think a lot more about the Fed than I do. But like I think, let me say this way. I think the Fed may get pressured into it. I don't know, you know, how they may just feel like we have to throw a bone. Maybe we agree with Waller and like downside risk of the labor market have increased and we have to look past inflation. It is not unreasonable to look past tariff costs inflation. The Fed has papers saying that. I do think that if inflation does not improve dramatically.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Give you my alley views. I think it's been pretty stable recently. And again, it's a surprise. Anybody who reads it talks to me on Twitter. I mean, I've been routinely conceding. I thought it'd be weakening. My gut is still the weakening impulses will eventually kick in. And it may be like the back half of this story thing. It does not, by the way, mean recession. It just means like a slow bleed. I don't know if it creeps up, hiring and quits, start drifting down again. But my bands on that are really big. Like, you know, there are these forces squeezing labor demand, squeezing labor supply. Like at any given point, one of them get very powerful and swing labor in a certain direction. Do I expect labor market is going to be cooler? Yes. I think that's probably a good base case. But like there's this big tail that includes both labor market just continues being stable and a chunk of that tail that actually says labor starts heating up again because there's so few workers that employers are scrambling for them. When you look at some of the industries that have been hit by immigration, again, this is sector, so it's not the whole economy, but like hotels and restaurants.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Also, somewhat more timely than a lot of the other monthly surveys, right? We have for ISM or for market, we have market, I guess, comes out, which is a great survey. But this market surveys are great. They come out, like the preliminary thing comes out, like maybe two-thirds of the way through the month. And like we already have data that was collected just a few days ago when this survey comes out every two weeks. It's nice.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a caveat, but I do think it's interesting. Like, again, I don't see stuff in this survey that tells me, man, businesses have sort of turned a big, turned a corner. If anything, what surprised me is it's actually the most recent print. We got another one in two days, but like, was a little more upbeat. Like for change, the asking also what have you done the last two weeks and their recent employment actions have been a little more upbeat. They were a year ago, which is unusual for the history of this survey. It hasn't run for that long. And so again, what I look at, it's a useful bit of data. It asks a lot of details in a consistent way. I don't do industry deep dives usually on it, but they exist. And I think it's a nice little barometer. And again, if you're in certain AI adoption,”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You could find data in the jobs that are right now though tell up like an upbeat story. I do not think anybody should do that because I think it's worth looking at holistically, but I don't think it's this kind of thing where like everything's doom and gloom. Like we were worried about the continuum, jump back to continuing claims. We were worried about it. I was setting very pessimistic things and then all of a sudden it's become a little less pessimist or in fact substantially less pessimistic. They could still like not great, but I'm like, you know what? And I think that's sort of with this survey is I think what it's telling us is if we were, and there's other things, by the way, like the best that are different sizes, smaller, if smaller businesses are more a beat, the survey will send an upbeat message. And despite that, all the big businesses that employ more people are shining workers, then you're going to like this survey is going to be 2 up beat.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To it last fall when it looked like it was picking up. And I was like, is this indicative of a pickup in headcount? Did not happen, by the way. It was the weird thing. And then all of a sudden people start freeing out tariffs and it tanked. And at that point, I'm like, are they going to start cutting headcount? And they didn't. And I think one thing that kind of made me realize and change sort of my perspective on some of these surveys and forward-looking things is like, it's one thing to say you're going to do something in six months. A lot of stuff can happen in six months. My general feelings, I would expect that maybe if you're extended period, you're pessimistic what's going to happen in the future, they'll eventually turn to action. But like some of it's just sentiment about the future is going to fluctuate a lot more wildly than whatever you do. More recently, the weird part is that survey's been a little more upbeat. And I do not know how much weight I want to put on it. But again, it's not the only data point. Like, again, you know, if you want to, if you were a cherry picker,”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the first thing is if you're somebody who follows the ISM and the PMIs, this survey is similar. It doesn't exactly, but it's the same kind of thing. They ask businesses, all sorts of questions. I use this survey for AI adoption, like that kind of thing too. It's very useful for that, by the way. And I hope they don't discontinue it. Maybe this will fly under the radar. And it's a census, so who knows? But I think the main reason I'm interested, and I'm interested in all these servers, this one's nice because by the government, the data is publicly available. I don't have to kind of like decide, you know, how I'm going to modify the data that much. Whereas if you're combining Philly Fed and Empire and ISM, it starts being a little messier. But it's not the only one I follow, but just ask these questions pretty consistently over time. And I've been interested a lot in the hiring plans data. I think I asked a very specific question. You expect your headcount to expand or decrease six months. Now, I started paying a lot of attention.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it is an okay framework to start thinking about are we in the painless phase of reducing job openings? Are we in a phase where in fact even minor tweaks in labor to man can cause huge fluctuations in unemployment? And I think right now we're in a phase where small change, like sort of small, like let's call it You know, changes in labor demand will cause roughly proportional changes in unemployment. And I think that we're again openings. I said I don't look at them, but I have bothered to looking at them. Like, are they telling us a different story than hiring quits? And they're not. I mean, openings have kind of their decline has either stopped or slowed by a lot over the past year.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what was interesting to me about that argument was like, there's no guarantee that the beverage curve is not like some sort of directional thing where like once you start moving, you inevitably like, you know, it's just a description of where you are along that trade-off. I mean, you could start moving up, you could start sliding down diagonal thing and then something changes and you start moving up until the left. What's weird is we kind of went through this phase in 23, 24 where the unproduct went up. Openings went down and we're kind of sliding to the right. And we just kind of stopped. It's funny. I have this beverage curb char that I periodically share and I kind of stopped updating it because there's this big blob that we've been stuck in for about a year where it's not, again, we sort of have moved a little bit down and to the right and then we just kind of stopped. We didn't like do this thing that people were worried about last summer when the Fed started easing, which was we're going to head to the really horizontal part of it where openings, in fact, are not even coming down that much and that employee starts rocketing up.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Funny because I actually don't. The first is I've been somewhat skeptical of Java news data. It's not, I don't think it's the most. I mean, I know the Fed pays attention to it. I understand what conceptually people are interested, but my sense is I quickly, I look at it and most interest in the turnover numbers. Because in the end, like openings, the very ephemeral thing, like it seems like there may be some structural reasons why that number's gone up. And like, it's still fairly high by historical standards, even as lay market other measures are below. And so I'm just like, I don't know how much weight I put on it. But I think there's generally an okay conceptual framework. It's reasonable. Waller nailed that specific aspect. And then all of a sudden, sometime in like 23, we started moving to like a more diagonal version. People are like, oh boy. People were like, guy, once you, and I always thought it was a weird, I mean, first, it's not good to be on that part and definitely not good to me moving down into the right.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They haven't got worse, but what I find interesting is okay once you as a market practitioner get armed with, you got the job vacancy data from Jolts and now you have the unemployment rate. Oh, look, you get the beverage curve, which is this curve for those that don't know that you can sort of track the sensitivity from or like how much slack is available in the labor market. And what's interesting is that at the beginning of the hiking cycle, Governor Waller talked a lot about how he felt that there was a lot of room for them to hike and be quite aggressive because of where we were at in the beverage curve. And we'll have the beverage curve up here when we're talking about this. But you could see that he felt that we could really tighten things up until we hit that like 4.5% level on the vacancy rate, I believe, before we started to see an acceleration in the unemployment rate. And what's interesting is now we're sort of around that level and we've been hovering around it ever since. And so I'm just curious, how do you utilize that framework that I've”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of it, like the one thing I think that this jolts report high, I mean, I think sort of it's really useful for those hiring and quit staff. That's like that's what is your, I mean, the laps are interesting. It's always a fun story. It's like, say, oh, despite the headlines, layoffs are still really low, whatever. But like, I think that what would get me, for example, we talked about if layer could start cooling again, to me, if that hiring number that was a little weaker that we'd gotten the last Jills report repeats, or if hiring falls down further or if quits start coming down, Like that's a bad like to me, that would really cement a pessimistic interpretation of where it's going on there and if they stay steady, then I'm like, and then I'm worried stays today around the same time, that's sort of the key story of the late market's actually been stable since last summer or fall is that these all these indicators kind of agree that things have not gone worse during this period.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not really historically really hiring drives a lot of this. And the reason is, even if the officer low, if people that are laid off can't find jobs, that pool of unemployment is going to creep up. That really tells a lot of the story for why unemployment rate has gone up in the last few years, just that ability to absorb from that employment pool has weakened because we're hiring fewer people. And so I guess I would think that if we do end up tipping into a recession, I hope not, but let's say we do, layoffs will be like the last thing to move. They didn't really get going in 2008 until like the spring or summer and really didn't get going in a big win until Lehman hit. The economy had been in recession for months by that point. We're getting NFP numbers that were negative at that point. It was going up. It was not a very severe recession, but it was, you know, it was recession. And in 2001, around September 11th, they really spiked. But like we had been recession again for a while before layoffs got going. So again, it's.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's like this small other separations category that nobody pays attention to and tends to actually move in tandem with quits typically, but is on a much smaller scale. And the way to think about all these data points is like hiring and quits are frankly leaving aside the very extreme recessions are nearly where all the action is. Like when the labor market's good or and getting better, hiring and quitsuma, when it's cool and they come down and they've come down a lot in the past few years, the late market's cool. We had crazy. That's why people crawling with great resignation because we had hiring and quits because of job hopping were off the charts in 21-22. It's come down a lot. Layoffs tend to be like they're low right now, but they're also like very stable and like they're sort of feeling that everybody's like, oh, and there's a recession layoffs are going to pick up.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the beginning, and then all of a sudden they like really pick up toward the end. It's possible that you could get a really strong jolts in a weak NFP. Just throwing it, I mean, like, I don't think it's necessarily worth thinking about this too hard, but just a good thing to keep them back in mind. So what does jolts do? It's a survey of businesses, a lot like the survey that generates NFP, it's a different survey, but like they're actually anchored over time, the revisions try to smush them together, but they are different surveys. Like they're not, it's not like it doesn't come out of data for an NFP. It is, by the way, probably has some more annoying requests from firms because doing a simple kind of employee is easy. Telling people this many people were added during the course of the month. This people were subtracted. And then why they were subtracted? Because you get asked, did they leave? Were they laid off? Were they quit? There are other forms of retirement. Retirements, for example, don't count as quickly.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Inside baseball. There's a Jolt survey. It comes up every month First weird thing about it, they actually moved it earlier on the calendar, but it's still like, it is an older bit of history than the jobs report that comes in a few months later, a few days later. So, for example, we get in early August, in early September, wait, one month. We're in August. So in early September, we're going to get the August data. A few days earlier, probably on Tuesday or Wednesday, I think, Joltz is going to release the data for the prior month, which I guess will be July. And just something worth keeping in mind, but there's a quirk there, which is like the timing of it. Jolts measures the entire month, whereas a lot of the monthly jobs report surveys correspond to like the period, including the 12th of the month. Theoretically, the Jolt data is covers data of the BILA, even though it's like a prior month includes some data that would not have registered. So for example, let's say that in a given month, hires are terrible.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comes from and some other stuff like you can construct quasi jolts measures and I'm really into these are a really nice supplement they don't they don't replace jolts but it's nice so basically instead of like the jolts is a survey of businesses businesses say you know we hired this many people we laid off this many people we this many people quit this how many job openings we have but like the cps a nice supplement to it and basically they sink from the same hymn sheet it's just a nice thing to have it comes a little earlier but it's noisier and there are people that have developed like there's two researchers amanda mashad and catherine ellie roth at this awesome like they track layoffs and quits in a non-employment based on the cps it's a nice it's totally different from jolts it it's noisier and it has some other quirks but if you're like a labor market data addict worth checking out there's job switching probabilities the philly fed you know muscarini pastel vinay and fujita put out and you can also do some other things i just mentioned it because i think that people are interested but let's say that's too”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, love the Jolt stat out. So before I talk about the Jolt stat, I'll just do a plug because actually, you know, it's funny I'm spending so much time talking about non-front payroll versions. Like, I actually think that the current population survey with the unemployed rate.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Proxy for that segment of unemployment. And it's useful just because it comes out earlier. I do not think it's perfect. Sometimes as I said it misses, but it's probably one of the higher quality signals and we get it like a few weeks early. It's nice to have.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like are probably also, I mean, I guess LGBT rules vary, and then some states are just generally more generous. So, maybe there's some other stuff. People some of us can claim I'd have to look at exactly where it is, but there's a separate line, I think, for like share, like work share. When you hour some states, you're eligible. But I think the continuing claims numbers just literally is probably likely to correspond to that hardcore unemployment thing where you're actively looking for work and you like really to lose your job and you don't expect to get it anytime back anytime soon, so you better start playing benefits. And I think those numbers have tracked together not perfectly, but like, okay, in the sense I call it like a now cast. And by the way, missed in June when that share of unemployment fell down and claims actually looked like they were zooming up in June. But just generally, I think that's sort of it. I think about these two parts of the claims report as like a proxy, not a perfect one, but a proxy for layoffs.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That at some point it's going to reopen and you'll be called back. And then you have people that finish temporary. You know, you don't expect it to come back. Like essentially, you really don't have a job. It's not like you have your temporarily out of luck with a job that's going to come back. And this has been in the last few cycles, leaving aside COVID, the big force in causing unemployment to go up. And it's been over the past two and a half years has crept up a little bit. What's weird is actually behaved during that period where unemployment rate was like moving up last year. It was actually not a big driver, which was, I think, weird and interesting. And the worst part of it actually happened with the unemployer was still relatively benign in 2023 and early 24. But the reason I bring that up is my sense is, again, claims do partially correspond to like the temporary layoff. People on temporary layoff can claim. It's just that number is not moving that much. And people who lose temporary jobs typically”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of college, their re-entrance. Some of these are people that are, you know, actually had a job before college, and they didn't work while they were in college and they come in and they're actually not new. It's weird, but they're actually, I learned this at some point in the past year and it's surprising, but they're actually re-entranced because they have worked before. But some re-enterers are people that, you know, maybe they collected severance. And after six months runs out and they file and now they're now starting to look for work again. Or maybe like they got discouraged or they kind of or something happened in life and they stopped looking. Maybe their parents that weren't on leave that left the workforce and are coming back. There's re-entrants. And then you have people that actually lose their jobs for a variety of reasons. There's people that are on, this used to be a really big thing that is much less of an issue. It caused a little bit of a weird freak out of the job market, I think, last summer, which was temporary layoffs. That's the idea that actually was really big in COVID and then was really big in the 60s and 70s, which is your worksite shuts down. You don't have a job.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To continue claims different initial claims of flow. It's how people claim for the first time. Continue claims of stock. It's like how people are claiming at the present time. And this is sort of historically been used as a proxy for the unemployment. You can use something called covered employment, which is how people are eligible, creates a denominator, and then you can use that ratio. It's called the insured unemployment rate, continuing claims divided by covered employment to generate the insured unemployment rate. And historically you've thought about it as a proxy for the unemployment rate. And it tends to be actually when things really are heading south and the unemployer rate is spiking up. It does tend to functionally be it. However, what's important, and I think has mattered during this cycle, is not unemployment is actually composed of a lot of things. There are people that are unemployed because they just quit their jobs or job leavers. There are people that come into the job market for literally the first time new entrants, like people that graduate from high school. Some cases people graduate.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All of a sudden the wave of layoffs will come in and then they'll go up. But I don't think that these sort of structural explanations may have some validity can explain what claims have suddenly fallen.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like expanded by a lot. And I think when I think about claims, I am mostly thinking about these sort of short-term-ish as in like a year and a half fluctuations. Like I have a very strong conviction. If we were to suddenly see a big surge in layoffs, yeah, some of those people will not claim. They'll go to the gay economy. But some chunk of them would, in fact, claim and we would see initial claims go up. And so I do like, again, to me, it's kind of, that's sort of that argument. It's very plausible. There are a variety, again, like the thing of like people compare initial claims to like what they were in like the 80s or 90s or 20 teens. I don't think that's fair. I don't think that is an, like people shouldn't be doing that kind of comparison. There are other better indicators for that kind of comparison. Claims is not it. But like for like last, you know, the fact that initial claims have suddenly dipped could be noise. I actually think that's well within the realm that there's something weird going on and temporary noise and if they're going to bounce back fair or”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, so it is true, like, I think it is possible that the drift in unemployment for non-I mean, it could be that part-time work is an example. If we see it for economic reasons, which has crept up a little bit over the last few years, et cetera, I mean, it could be people working more than one full-time job. Like there could be, like, my sense is that, for example, we've seen more, there's now more people working, you know, I'd have to look at the specifics, but like, you know, fluctuation of people working more than one job, like indicative of this, but the reason why I'm sort of like, I'm more skeptical, this argument, by the way, because I've heard it, is fair enough. That's the reason for why initial claims, if you compare them to like a few years ago, would be the case. It would not explain to me why all of a sudden initial claims would fall in like the span of a few months, right? It's not like the gig economy suddenly...”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Into fewer and more adorable layoffs. But regardless, that's one. The other big point of doubt, it doesn't cover everything.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the case that when people get laid off, that is a key that usually determines the eligibility because if you quit your job, you usually are not eligible to claim. You lose your job. You're actively looking for work, then you can get unemployment insurance. And so that's why it's a layoff proxy. It is not perfect. There have been lots of points on why it is lower than it would have been at a similar point in the cycle in the past. I mean, some of it's like the gig economy is it worth it. Which, by the way, I don't disagree with inherently for why the level over a long period of time we lower. There are also restrictions. It's gotten harder. The economy's changed in ways that has made it less likely, like essentially it used to be there was a lot more churn having to do with the manufacturing sector. Just in general, it seems like demographically, like long run, layoffs are trending downwards. Maybe one of the reasons why layoffs are low now is less of a cyclical thing and more just of a labor market changing structure.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Man, so it's fairly, but it's worth it because there's something fun in there. The first thing that I guess I'd say that I think sometimes, I think So let's start with that. And so, again, it's different in the sense that it's not a survey and the revision. There's also revisions to the annual seasonal adjustment factors. I actually think personally that there's some residual seasonal adjustment factors are not doing that great right now. And so potentially that could change the way the series looks. But like, I think seasonal adjustment revisions tend not to matter as much because the underlying data is kind of not changing. So like it's a low second order revision, not a first order one, which is like an NFP where we're like, oh my gosh, we just like underlying it assume like there's no like we assume there were X thousand jobs that weren't there or we suddenly discovered under the mattress there were more jobs than we thought But that's that's the context in which the data comes out. There's really two big chunks that people pay attention to and they're proxies to different things I think is actually useful one is initial claims this is a proxy for layoffs the idea is you know that and historically”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the first thing is, I love the claims data. I wake up early every week, someone is saying, I'm here on the West Coast with you. So it's early. I hope you're still asleep”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so let's continue our journey into unpacking this toolkit that we have at our disposal. So we've talked about the NFP and all of that associated with it. Let's shift into claims data. So draw supports come out every month. Claims data is every week. Give the initial claims, the continuing claims. How do you think about the two? What's the right way to think about it? What are some other more granular details that you look for in those data points every week?”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Break even payroll number. People ask me, like, what do you think the break-even payroll payroll number is? These things are hard to actually estimate with precision because so many things underlying it like, you know, there's the birth death model that can affect that estimate. Census population estimates will change it because if census population estimates are too high, then that means the payroll break-even number will naturally actually be lower than we think. But it's lower. And I think that these forces push against each other in terms of labor market slack, but they're both pushing payroll growth down. And I think that is unusual because in a normal business cycle, we're really used to is, well, payroll growth is slowing. This is because demand growth is slowing. And, you know, the labor market can no longer absorb employers can no longer absorb the growth in the labor force and therefore the unflow rate's going up or the share of primage employed people is going down.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is followed by an August report. That's bad and a September report that's bad. And all of a sudden we find ourselves in that employ rate north of 4.5% by the end of the year, maybe in close to 5%. That's one possibility. The other one is, by the way, that we sort of talked about is the immigration squeeze is ongoing and has the potential to get worse because we are still to some extent absorbing in the process of absorbing like that big boost of labor supply. What if it turns out the labor supply squeezes so strong that we are potentially dealing with a tighter labor market a year from now a small like essentially a low growth low employment growth of like tighter labor market? It's not my base case, but is it outlandish to think this could happen? No, I don't definitely don't think so. And it's hard because again what we were sort of Jed Coco has and me and other people and Stan Voiger and Wendy Edelberg have all they've all done like these amazing estimates of what they think the”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, first, I think a boring answer, I felt good when Chair Powell said this because I've sort of been playing around with it as well, and he's obviously much smarter than me. So I felt whenever somebody smarter and more famous agrees with me, I feel good. But Levity aside, I think it is a good way of thinking about it right now. I would not view it as like some sort of permanent state of affairs. I think that's sort of it. It's like, so far, yes, that's what sort of happened. You know, I share this gift from like, I think one of the naked gun movies of Lesson Nielsen saying nothing to see here while things are blowing up. I think the point is there's nothing to see here if you're just looking to upload an isolation. Meanwhile, there's all these huge things happening and they're pushing against each other. If they've offset so far, does not mean they're going to keep offsetting each other durably. Like maybe it is that the demand side effects of the tariffs are going to really start kicking in. And so July's report, which was bad.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the reason I bring that up is we're sort of in a world of lower job growth, but I'm already not zooming up. And I think that labor supply and immigration is the big story, I think. Again, there's some debate over whether that's what's causing the market to stabilize. But just saying in terms of that relationship between the trajectory of the unemployment rate and non-form payroll growth that we thought we had coming in, it's repeatedly been like thrown off sides by labor supply growth versus zooming up in 2023 and early 2024 and then crashing since the second half of 2024.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Change in a way that is not tied to like what we think of as lay market strengthness of slack. So to pick an example, during 2023, right up, it's at least early 24, we had big jobs numbers. They got revised subsequently, but like you still look at it and those numbers are in the 20 teams that are considered like solid. In some cases, their numbers were more than solid. But again, it's a decent run. And Aung Hori had it up. I mean, there were some periods where the unemployer months where the employer headed down or stable, but just generally there was a period like that's when we triggered the SOM rule, right? And then there were some debate whether some rule was ever triggered. But like the uproar went up by a lot during that period. Now all of a sudden we have a bad jobs report, but he comes in the context of being pretty stable. It was at 4.2 something, you know, or about 4.2 in July of 2024. It's now at 4.2 again. And maybe we're in the start of a new uptrend, but just generally it was flat for a year.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, if you're adding fewer people, then to keep the entirety steady, you need to add less to employment each month. And if you're growing labor force very slowly, then that number, I mean, theoretically, by the way, if at some point we still have very low immigration and the population is aging a lot, it could even be that negative payroll growth, negative employment growth, instead of the steady unemployment rate. I mean, like I drew this analogy somewhere of like, you know, look at Japan, look at Southern Europe. These are countries with an aging population, the prime working age, you know, native-born populations not growing. It's okay, so it's shrinking. And again, they have, in some cases, quite tight labor markets in they're not adding net jobs. And I think that just that's, and the reason I mentioned this is it's sort of this we're used to our framework always think of these numbers as big payroll number, strong job market, weak, low payroll number, weak job market. And I think we have this force here that is causing that to.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's again, it's a model. So it's not like they're just like, oh, I don't know. But it is like the recent population data gets shakier. And what we saw early last year is the BLS finally updated and, or the sensor updated and concluded, in fact, that not only were they undercounting population growth in 2024, but in fact several years back. So we got this big jump. If you look at the household survey series, like the level employment or label labor force and liberal employment or even the level of unemployment, they all got like a big jump up because it was employment in one shot in the VLS data. And the reason I mention this is like right now, census models are assuming slower population growth underlying it, which, you know, by the way, does not go non-farm at all. Like non-farm, we talk about slower payroll growth because of population growth that has nothing to do with census sessimists. They don't use it.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First thing is, and it's funny because it's been very under discussed, and I hesitate to bring it up because I don't want people to freak out, but it's actually like estimating the population is one of the hardest things that the government, the Census Bureau has to do. The BLS basically has relied on census estimates. And in fact, given that the administration is talking about doing certain things with the census, I don't know if they'll be able to do it. could be even more of a problem, right? But I think that sort of the reason I bring that up is the BLS conduct census every 10 years. You have to guess and we say guess, I mean educating us. You have to estimate what is happening in the interim. And part of the problem is that data, the census every 10 years are going to wait 10 years to get an accurate estimate. You're not. You're going to have interim sources that are decent quality. And then for very recent data on population, you are guessing. There's projections.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm curious about that immigration dynamic. Let's use that as a catalyst to talk what we just talked about to compare to this latest jobs report. So, okay, we've had this huge surge in immigration the last couple years and now the complete reversal. And my first question is just around how do you look through that pass-through into the data? So we've obviously seen the labor force participation rate dwindle down and now you've had this interesting situation where just in this recent report we've seen unemployment rate that's stayed pretty low compared to what's going on in these major revisions in the non-farm prints. So yeah, what's the right way to think about how immigration is affecting this data?”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The past, you know, certainly in the past year, maybe in the past few months, very conceivable as in the past few months. It's sometimes hard to tell too because the data, the way the data works is like it gives a sense of timing that does not always correspond. Like that's why some indicators will all move in the same direction but kind of lurch out of sync and then rejoin is like there's not a so but I think it's fair to just conclude from this data that payroll growth is slowed sharply sometime over the past year and probably more recently and that's actually been slowing for longer ever since you know the big immigration boom started winding down in the second half of 2024.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Big definition, but understand. No, I don't. Let me say this way. I think that just generally, the way I would think about it based on what we know now is very reasonable for you to conclude. Employment growth has slowed.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it sounds like the way to net this all out is to be intellectually skeptical of the initial numbers, like validate them in dig deep, but understand that, yeah, but that we are within a realm of normal variants in the data. There's no weird things happening.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Specific number contains. It's like you're kind of extrapolating out a signal that you're detecting from it. I just think that humility of the numbers not taking the numbers too literally true of every data set notch the BLS report, not just a non-farm priorities, is a very good habit or a good starting point.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Other stuff too. Even data that doesn't get revised. If a data doesn't get revised, you still can't be sure it really tells you what's going on in isolation. And I just encourage people just generally as good data analysis hygiene, like to not just take every data point literally, not follow sentiment to up and down when you have a good number. When a good report does not inherently mean the economies all of a sudden turn the point to booming, when you get a bad report like last month and it was a bad report, even outside of non-farm payrolls, it doesn't mean the sky is falling. I just think it's good to be judicious. It may mean, by the way, there are going to be slower sometimes. And maybe you have a view that you're like this month, I really believe that number. Fair. I mean, like, again, how many economists? A lot of people listening to this are actually market perspectives. And so I get that. You need more of a strong view. But just realistically, that is more imposition on your gas worth thing. I would also be clear about what it is. You're like, this is about your guess of where things are headed and less about what this”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even in the report, you can find the single worst point, which might even be worse than payrolls. I'm sure you could find something else in the report that was worse than payrolls. If you were a doomer, you were just looking at temp employment forever and ignoring everything else. You could also be a very upbeat person and pick like the single most upbeat part of their report. And then broaden into constellation of data, other indicators. Like my feeling is don't overnext on a report. Don't take any data pointing is not even revisions. Don't take it too literally. Like my feeling is like, you know, the fact that payroll growth is averaged 35K a month is probably like an okay reflection of what is going on directionally, but like there could still be an overcount. I mean, I think that just generally, like be humble about how certain you can be based on this data if the parallel report, if heaven forbid what the BLS commissioner says, are going to discontinue the monthly jobs report, I really, really hope this does not happen. If they do it, you're going to have to be doing this.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think the way I would think about it though is even those final numbers, like, and I think this is a good thing in data, like in the end, and I guess I would tell this as somebody, like it's not how the BLC republish, just about how you should think about this data. It is a good habit always to not look at one piece of isolation in isolation because it could just be an outlier. At any point, if we look at all the constellation of data, if you were the kind of person, we know this because there's ongoing debates. If you want to be a doomer,”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Distilling all of that, it feels like for market participants or investors that are trying to form an opinion on whether these amount of revisions we get, are they within the standard band of deviations or are we seeing an outlier in the last couple years? So it sounds like the three vectors are seasonal adjustments. Birth death model changes. And then just this iteration in the narrow confidence interval. Right. Yeah. And then just this narrowing of the confidence interval from the initial survey where, correct me if I'm wrong, but they target around like a 90% confidence interval, which leads to like. Plus minus 100,000 jobs. And then as that progresses, it gets more accurate.”
2025-08-13 · Forward Guidance · Should We Be Worried About Jobs Report Revisions? | Guy Berger · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT