Okay here's my jobs day take: do not get stuck in the expectations game! My thread...

Total job gains came in a little above expectations, so the expectations game says we should be shouting that this is great. But expectations were for a slowdown in the recovery and that's what we got.

If you take out temporary Census jobs, this was 1.1 million. Last month was 1.7. The month before that was 4.7. The recovery is rapidly decelerating and we still have half of the lost jobs to get back, that shouldn't be happening.

You also have to look below the surface, beyond the Pandemic Recovery and into the Pandemic Recession. Both exist, and are in some ways different phenomenon. The Pandemic Recovery is the ongoing bounceback as demand returns in some places & companies...

The Pandemic Recession is building quietly underneath this. Permanent job losses moved back up to 2 million, which is big number even if you assume the rest of the job losses will be temporary.

On a technical note, I am very skeptical of the household survey this month. Claims data suggest continued job loss, the bounceback in HH employment is implausibly big, and the response rate remains problematically low. I would look for some give back there next month.

I do not root against the economy. I do not root for bad jobs reports. I think that violates the hippocratic oath of economists, it's not in my nature as well. But I am very concerned about the misleading signals being read.