Life with Ken

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I highlighted this story last week when the news first broke. I recently started publishing my takes and commentary on the Life with Ken main website, as opposed to exclusively in our newsletter. The primary reason for doing so is that this change makes it easier for us to release more dynamic and engaging content all around our ecosystem. This week’s newsletter is on “memetic desires”, a concept that blew my mind. Anyway, below is my take on the job numbers revision that took place at the beginning of this month: 

I’m not going to rehash what I covered there, but I want to pick this story back up because of some of the newest developments since that thread. Mainly, President Trump has fired the previous head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and has nominated E.J. Antoni, an economist with the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is a Washington D.C. based organization that primarily focuses on promoting conservative projects and endeavors. 

Antoni is a PhD and “Chief Economist, and Richard Aster Fellow, Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget” with the Heritage Foundation. He has several accolades under his belt but the consternation around his nomination is in how he will conduct himself as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) head. One’s first hypothesis may be that he will be partisan in how he conducts his work and only give Trump the data he wants to hear and see.

Conclusively, one of the issues with the BLS, and this is less about who’s leading and more about how the office is run in general, is the quality of data used to project job numbers is low. The BLS uses antiquated processes to gauge new jobs added to the economy and overall economic activity. Part of that process involves a voluntary submission of information from employers. The head of the BLS or its commissioner isn’t highly engaged with the collection of this information which mostly comes from surveys, but they do give final approval before any information is publicly released.

In a Fox News interview before his nomination, Antoni said that the BLS, “should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data.” No one is disputing if whether or not the data could be more accurate, again the concern is will Antoni be apolitical? The job numbers reports and similar information that comes from BLS is critical for a host of economic decision making. One of the big issues right now is when the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates. 

It can be argued that if the job numbers for May and June were more accurate the Fed would have been inclined to take action sooner than it has. Between the tariffs, the Fed, job numbers, and AI, which is both contributing to job loss and economic growth, the only certain thing right now is uncertainty. If your bearish tariffs are a ball and chain on the economy, market prices are overinflated, and AI is coming to take everyone’s livelihood. If your bullish tariffs are working in the U.S’ favor, the One Big Beautiful Bill has set the stage for growth, the interest rate should have come down already, AI is coming for everyone’s job but yours, and the S&P is going to hit 700. 

This isn’t financial advice and I don’t give financial advice, so do your own due diligence. The point is perception is reality in this current market and that can affect anyone whether you’re a business trying to stay afloat or scale up, a college grad looking for dignifying or at least decent paying work, a private citizen looking to buy a house, or an investor with a large cash position. As I wrote previously, the tariff regime is a concern simply because no one knows what will happen three and a half years from now. I’m not saying it was necessarily wrong for the U.S. to take a more hands on approach with respect to its debt and trade relations but without law, the enacted agenda of a head of state is inherently inconsistent; which at the very least makes long term execution a challenge.

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