Jobs And The Workplace

I’m not an economist. Nevertheless, I was nonplussed yesterday to see Zerohedge adopting the CW in rather apodictic fashion with regard to the new job stats that came out this morning. The CW was that this would be big upbeat news. The reality is what probably should have been expected from this regime: Another Big Miss. Here’s ZH’s mea culpa—but note the good news re government jobs at the end:

Payrolls Huge Miss: Just 194K Jobs Added In September, Even As Unemployment Rate Tumbles, Wages Rise

Well, coming into today's payrolls report we said that the number would be a beat and the only question was how big, as a result of millions of Americans seeing their emergency benefits expiring. Boy were we wrong: moments ago the BLS reported that with expectations of a 500K print and whisper numbers sharply higher, in September the US added just 194K jobs (in fact, the number came below the lowest of all but one of the 71 economist forecasts, with just Banque Pictet's Thomas Costberg forecasting a 0 print). Sept payrolls were down by nearly half from the upward revised 366K in August, the first back-to-back monthly drop in payrolls this year and the lowest print of 2021 (even as then umber of Household survey showed an increase of 526K jobs in the month!), likely impairing the Fed's tapering schedule as this number was so bad as to pass as a "major shock" from the Fed's perspective, even if as the BLS itself admits a big reason for the drop was a seasonal adjustment in local government education, which may have pulled the number down by some 150K

….

Employment in public education plunged over the month (more below).

…, government workers tumbled by a whopping 123K, led by the loss of 144K government education jobs. As shown below, this was the biggest drop in government workers since 2020.

I like to juxtapose items to add perspective. So here’s Karl Denninger talking about the workplace and the mandated firings. This is simple common sense:

Yes, you might get people … to "comply."

But in doing so you permanently destroyed their willingness to put 100% into their job. Now they are all pissed off, working only to the minimum required to not get fired, they hate their boss, they hate the company, they hate every screaming Karen who wagged their finger at them, they hate Biden and they'd like to see all of them bankrupt, gone, even dead. In today's tight labor market you can't replace them either; who are you going to hire? …  When you threaten to force them to do whatever you demand again -- and again -- and again -- even at the cost of their own health, money and life?

…

Biden thinks he "wins" with such actions. No, he doesn't. He's ruined the economy. That's done now. A person, once coerced can't be un-coerced. You can't get back what you destroyed. It's gone. And that's without all the bad real effects that might come to such a person …

There’s a reckoning coming.