Seasonal job rejiggering doesn’t compute

THE

employment report for August was good — not great — but there were some strange numbers that President Trump should have someone keep an eye on.

The puzzling figures have to do with seasonal adjustments — those yawn-inducing details that go into every government economic report.

Bottom line: The Labor Department made major changes to those adjustments from last year, and those changes cut the number of jobs created in August by 95,000 — thus producing the 201,000 new August positions that were announced last Friday.

Those extra jobs, of course, would change a lot of things — including the rhetoric going into the November congressional elections and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decisions.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the monthly jobs report, told me the larger than usual seasonal adjustments were made because August had five weeks this year — after having four weeks for the past three years.

I’m afraid I still don’t understand. This past August had 22 work days— one less than in August 2016 and 2017 and one day more than in August 2015.

So my question remains: Why the big change in the seasonal adjustments? Why was there a 95,000 job discrepancy?

Companies typically hire and fire on a work day. Nobody is sitting in an office on a Saturday or Sunday reporting personnel changes to the BLS, which is how the government obtains its data. My friend, veteran Wall Streeter

Bill King, was the first to spot this peculiarity in the numbers. In fact, he says the seasonal adjustments have been strange like this all year.

In August 2017, which had 23 work days, the BLS’ seasonal adjustments added 148,000 jobs. In August 2018, the adjustments added only 53,000 jobs — 95,000 fewer jobs, or a cut of 64 percent.

Now, seasonal adjustments aren’t always exactly the same. But the change from last year to this one was very noticeable and it deprived Trump of a not insignificant additional 95,000 jobs.

I’m wondering if the seasonal adjustments will fall in Trump’s favor one of these months, maybe even in the report that comes out just days before the November election.

The details of the employment report are something that should also worry Democrats and make President Trump happy. Unemployment among blacks and Hispanics is staying low — and wage growth for everyone is improving.

Blacks and Hispanics are typically Democratic supporters. The knock on the job growth we’ve seen so far this year is that wages aren’t improving enough because the jobs being created are lousy ones.

As I said, the August jobs report was pretty strong, with an increase of 201,000. That was slightly better than expected.

The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.9 percent.

And wages grew by 10 cents an hour. Average wages are now up 2.9 percent over the last year.

Now the bad news: The Labor Department revised downward June’s job growth from 248,000 to 208,000 and July’s from 157,000 to 147,000. As I said in my last column, the revisions had been going upward all the way back to February.

What about blacks and Hispanics — two groups Trump needs to help his cause? Unemployment among blacks was 6.3 percent in August, which is much higher than the national average for all adults. But that was better than the 6.6 percent jobless rate for blacks a year ago.

The same is true for Hispanics. In that group, overall unemployment is 4.7 percent — lower than the 5.1 percent in August 2017.

I’m going to repeat something because I know it annoys so many people. If the midterm elections are strongly influenced by the economy (and, again, I think they will be), then the Democrats will have to find something monstrously bad on Trump between now and the Nov. 6 election.

The Bob Woodward book and the anonymous op-ed piece in The New York Times are probably just the start. Be prepared, investors, for a rocky couple of months.

Here’s a doozy of a statistic. According to WalletHub’s 2018 Credit Score and iPhone survey, nearly 28 million Americans believe that getting one of the Apple iPhones to be introduced this week is worth going into debt to purchase.

They haven’t even seen the phones yet! And some models will cost more than $1,000!

Please understand that this is a survey and this site didn’t call every American. WalletHub surveyed only 480 people. And 11 percent — which would represent 28 million adults — said they thought the new iPhone was debt-worthy.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that all 28 million American adults will buy new iPhones. And it doesn’t mean that these people will have good enough credit to buy one.

But it does say something about priorities. And the demographics are interesting: Five times more millennials than baby boomers would go into debt for the new phones. And 29 percent of phone shoppers don’t know they could have their credit scores checked when buying the phone — which could mean they won’t be extended the loan.

I have an iPhone 7, and I think it’s great. I’ll probably be forced to buy a new iPhone — or a competing brand — the day after I accidently drop my current one into the toilet. Which is why I always have a firm grip when I’m in that position.