Results from a Private Survey of the Employment Situation: October, 2019

Earlier this month I provided the results from a private survey of consumer conditions and expectations that I have been operating since I left my role as Head of Primary Research at Deutsche Bank. Although consumer confidence is interesting, the statistical release that is most significant in terms of moving US markets is the Employment Situation release, and in particular the Non-Farm Payroll Employment change (with seasonal adjustment).

I also run a survey to address the metrics associated with the release and, like the consumer confidence and expectations data provided earlier, this is done to support proprietary trading activity that I am engaged in. Unlike that survey however, this one is dramatically smaller in sample size than those executed by the US government (the CES and CPS surveys) and, consequently, my margin for error is quite a bit larger. The advantage is the prior knowledge of data that should be consistent on average with the ultimate release i.e. I expect the forward prediction error to have a zero mean when sufficient data has been collected.

That data is published below.

Ex post update: 11/01/2019: The official data was published at 8:30 am EDT today. The official numbers for Change in Non-Farm Payrolls, seasonally adjusted, were +128k for October…