Yesterday's Job Numbers are Romney's Latest Molehills

     Krugman got it right that there was nothing to see there as giving us much hint about where things are really going. These numbers from month to month have a lot of noise in them. Nate Silver explains:

     "The jobs numbers are subject to a fair amount of statistical noise; on average, the monthly job-growth number misses the market’s expectation by about 70,000 jobs. As a rough rule, the jobs numbers might have to be off about that much in one direction or another to tell a substantially different economic story, which in this case would have meant fewer than about 60,000 jobs being created or more than about 190,000."

     http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/effect-of-jobs-numbers-on-presidential-race-is-uncertain/

     Silver also points out the uncertainty based on one months job numbers are further underscored by the big difference between this BLS numbers yesterday and the ADP numbers on Thursday that actually showed a much more bullish case.

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/markets-explode-on-economic-news.html

      Silver goes on:

      "The degree of uncertainty in measuring jobs is underscored by the difference between the government’s report, which showed that 103,000 private-sector jobs were created July, and a separate report released on Thursday by the firm ADP Employer Services, which had 201,000 private-sector jobs added instead.
Interpretation of the report is further complicated by the fact that it could increase the likelihood of a renewed round of quantitative easing programs from the Federal Reserve. For this reason, investors saw the report as more of a wash, with stock prices little changed early on Friday."

       Look there are different ways to interpret the data and so much of it becomes misleading with it being so politicized, but the reality is that the market rose through the roof on Thursdays ADP numbers and if you notice didn't give back any of the gains on Friday. So reading between the lines maybe the ADP numbers were more accurate though that doesn't fall in with Romney's lame narrative. Recall the excitement Thursday on the Street:

       “There’s no ambiguity about the rally today—every economic data point we got was positive and the market liked Draghi’s comments,” said Brian Gendreau, market strategist at Cetera Financial Group. “We don’t know if this new program is going to succeed, but the ECB seems to be squarely in the camp of taking positive action.”
        http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/markets-explode-on-economic-news.html

         No ambiguity. That's pretty strong a statement for the market where participants are prudent and prefer to hedge their bets. Note, too that Obama's chances of winning haven't changed in the market. Romney will try to get traction out of this but much like his RNC convention, there won't be any.