Looks like the BLS is cooking the monthly job gains numbers again.

Total non farm YoY employment comparison  Source:   BLS

Total non farm 2016-5.xlsx

Ever wonder why the markets whipsaw and in the end don't react the way you would expect based on the monthly jobs report.  Maybe it is because the BLS seasonally adjusted employment gains number is being cooked.

If you look at the chart above it is easy to see that the 2016 employment trend is very comparable to 2015.  But it is impossible to tell whether 160k to 250k jobs were added to the 143 million total just by looking.

When April 2015 is compared to April 2016 you find there or 2.658 million more people employed.  This comes out to a monthly rate of 221.5k jobs added.  But the BLS said only 160k jobs were added.  The table below shows the difference between the BLS seasonal employment adjustment and my own using a simply YoY comparison.  I've done the comparison using averaging together several years of employment data or several months and typically come up with the same discrepancy quite frequently.  In fact if we simply average the last 4 months of employment and compare it to the same period in 2015 a 2.684 million jobs increase is found or a monthly rate of 224k, very comparable to the earlier seasonal adjustment method.

Seasonally adjusted job gains in 1000s
	BLS	Griz	Difference
January	168	220	52
February	233	221	-12
March	208	232	24
April	160	221	61
Total	769	894	125

So it looks like in the last four months the BLS has built up a 125k job cushion that can and will be added in a coming month.  Will it be added in a month with a big real drop making it look better than it really is?  This has happened before.  It sure is convenient that now that the Fed is getting serious about interest rate hikes employment growth has suddenly fallen off the cliff.  In fact in October through December of 2015 the BLS was reporting 295k, 280k and 270k jobs added in each month respectively.  Pretty dramatic shift from averaging 280k new jobs/month at the end of the year to only 190k/month so far in 2016.  The Griz method for seasonally adjusting the data only showed a 230k rate at the end of the year.

Job creation is certainly slowing, it is down to about a 1.9% annual rate or 220k/month growth rate from 2.3% annually or about 260k/month in late 2014 and early 2015.  But the extreme gyrations BLS has been reporting in monthly since early 2015 seem strangely timed.  Just when it looks like markets are ready to tank the monthly report suddenly gets better, but as soon as the Fed wants to raise rates job gains tank.

But it is my belief many professional big money traders actually load their models with the raw data and do their own adjusting as I do.  This drives the markets oftentimes in opposite directions than most expect.  In fact today treasury rates stayed solid as did stocks in the face of a "terrible" jobs report, as the media immediately reports a June rate hike is off the table.  Don't be surprised to see the dollar strengthen and rates rise much faster than most will expect in the coming weeks/months.  The underlying data is telling a different story than you are hearing in the press.