Juuuust a Bit Outside

People of notoriety are often given the opportunity to throw out a ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game.  As you can see in this video which highlights some of the worst throws, the sixty-foot toss is harder than the professionals make it look.  Similarly, economists throw out projections each month, anticipating the outcomes for major economic data points.

Employment figures are widely watched, so economists are inclined to put assumptions into their models, come up with estimates, and try to make the headline.  Headline-worthy forecasts for April 2021 were abundant.   Like other calculations, there is a spectrum of guesses.  The range of the latest approximations was one of the widest I can recall, expecting from 750,000 to 2.0 million net new jobs.

These guesses were a bit outside of reality.  As it turns out, America only added 266,000 net new workers to payrolls according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Adding to the disappointment, the prior period’s count was downwardly revised by 146,000, suggesting there were only 120,000 more employed in April than was first estimated in March’s report.  More Americans are participating in the labor force which is constructive and suggests a growing number of people want to work, but that increase also caused the unemployment rate to rise marginally to 6.1 percent.  Once again, the consensus missed the strike zone as they estimated the rate would fall.

Nobody wants to miss by that much.  Especially when it is being watched by a large crowd.  But Atlas is a patient group.  Like Bob Uecker’s character in the movie Major League, we’ll say they tried for the corner and missed.