The Bureau of Lying Statistics Reports the TRUTH
And the truth is ...
Surprise, Surprise, the BLS announced it will not issue any unemployment data with its October jobs report. Miserable as the numbers have been consistently looking from non-government sources, we saw that coming. It won’t include the unemployment-rate impact of the declining jobs we’ve been seeing until its report for November, and even that has been pushed back from Dec. 5 to Dec. 16.
I think we all knew the BLS would use the opportunity of the government shutdown to delay the truth. So, the one truth it has just given is that it will be delaying the truth.
An unemployment rate for October will not be included in those figures because the data “could not be collected,” the BLS said, citing the shutdown.
Convenient, given that firing the head of the BLS didn’t do anything to improve the August numbers when they were last reported over the previous July numbers that were, according to Trump, rigged to make him look bad.
The postponed date for the release on unemployment levels will be six days after the Federal Reserve meets to set interest rates, so the Fed will be flying half blind again. The payroll data on net new jobs will be released for September tomorrow (Thursday).
The rapidly rising star still shines
Also not surprising, Nvidia released a stellar report for revenue, profits and forward guidance. It’s kind of the last holdout in the AI downturn because most major tech businesses are trying to do AI business with Nvidia it seems; so all those companies putting in AI servers with no idea yet how to turn a profit on them are still committed to finishing those projects and other new ones they have slated, which means continuing to buy lots of chips from Nvidia.
That also was as expected in my article yesterday:
Nvidia reports after the close tomorrow, and a positive report could blow in just the amount of oxygen that smoldering investors are dying for like fading embers. That could be the final bellows for the speculative mania’s irrationality we’ve been talking about here at The Daily Doom. These investors have shown for a long time, they will deny all signs of recession in order to grasp a single straw wherever they can find one.
It is expected that Nvidia’s news will be good.
So, a nice boost for investors to be thankful for on the holiday next Thursday can be expected in the markets tomorrow. However, the bigger question is how long will it last? I am inclined to think it will be short. May not outlive this week. In the past when the stock market has been in the process of a big downturn, I’ve sometimes predicted a sudden boost as a one-off that would start to fade in a day or two and then, in a week we’d see the bottom drop out as investors realized that even the great news didn’t hold on. That has panned out.
This market has been more irrational than any other, though, including the dot-com days, so it’s a little harder to predict; but I think the irrational support for AI stock valuations is fading quickly. It may lean into Thanksgiving to complete the shortened trading week, but all of that may also hinge on how bad tomorrow’s BLS report is on new jobs (or net lost jobs).
The dawning truth about lying statistics
With the BLS, I expect the numbers always to be as rosy as they can paint them, especially now that the last boss got fired for negativity. However, that is getting increasingly hard to do without being called out on it because the raw numbers are so bad from everyone else. Still, they can make huge revisions next time, and blame the errors on the shutdown, too. Who could blame them when they were not working and not getting paid? But do that once in December, and I think the game is then over. They won’t be allowed any more plays like that.
Things are falling quickly. Even The Economist says in its predictions in the headlines below to expect a big bond collapse in 2026; and the US bond market today certainly registered its agreement in the form of a really ugly Treasury auction in 20yr tenure.