Dueling Job Reports! But Which One is Right?

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Just the other day, the payroll firm ADP issued a report that said more than 500,000 people had lost their jobs in May. They also revised their April unemployment records upward - to 545,000 from the previous estimate of 491,000.

Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued their report with a much sunnier view of the labor landscape - "nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000 in May, about half the average monthly decline for the prior 6 months."

Not sure how the two organizations came up with different numbers but both estimate unemployment to be at 9.4 percent (which, as some have noted, is a worse scenario than depicted in the Fed's stress tests, but we all know those were rigged, right?)

As you can imagine, the numbers cited by the BLS are happily received by the MSM. Some links to stories about this topic follow....

Denver Business Journal story on the BLS report

WSJ story on BLS report

MarketWatch story on ADP report

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