re: Ouch! 275k Jobs Added in February

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What? Fluffed up BLS labor data is all foreign born immigrants you say? Can't be.

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These data are highly cyclical/seasonal, particularly without any season adjustments. For example, if you look at the native population employment level in the middle of Trump's term, from July 2018 to January 2019, it shows a drop of 2,479,000, which is actually 32,000 more (just 1.3% though) than the 2,447,000 drop from July 2023 to January 2024. And not only are those numbers extremely close, the month to month chart looks quite, so clearly some sort of pattern that happens during this time period.

So whatever the interpretation of this for the most recent months, one should probably apply a similar interpretation to 2018

Finally though, if you look at the data from 2010-2019, you can a pretty clear upward trend but also a pretty noticeable seasonal/cyclical pattern pretty much every year.