At Palm State Mortgage, we know that just about everyone including mortgage seekers, reacted to May’s poor labor report.  It was the week’s big financial news and we saw a whole range of emotional responses from shock and awe, to fear and deep blue depression.  Predictions and prophecies sprang up like wild-fire.

Jobs Report: Facts, Fears and Forecasts

After an “unqualified dud of a jobs report,” the month of May was condemned by media and public opinion for offering only 38,000 new jobs during the entire month.  At US News and Jobs Report explained in Palm State Mortgage Company's New LightWorld Report, Andrew Soergel stated “May was the worst month for job growth the economy has seen in years.”

Likewise, Joseph Lake, director of global forecasting at the Economist Intelligence Unit, stated “The jobs report was bad, bad, bad: There is no positive spin to it.”

We hope we won’t be accused of spinning it, if we shed a little light on some of the facts behind the statistics and perhaps view some brighter data.

First of all, the data was a shock since, “During the last 3 months of 2015, we had average monthly job gains of 282,000.”

Lake added, “Not only was May a particularly weak month – the worst in almost six years – but revisions dragged previous months lower.”

So maybe it was the worst month for job gains since 2010, but Palm State Mortgage believes we should keep cool heads and take a second look at some of the glorified statistics behind the front page reports.  About those jobs report revisions–

60,000 of the jobs that were statistically counted in March and April never existed.  The true facts revealed, after the heady jobs report, that March’s 208,000 additions were actually 186,000 additional jobs.

The estimate for APalm State Mortgage Judges Job Report pril was lowered from 160,000 to 123,000.  This kind of statistical over-prediction and then revisions of it the following month is a poor pattern.  It has set many financial wizards up for a big fall when the real numbers are revealed.

Does anyone remember that Ma-ma used to say “You can prove anything with statistics?”  

Factual reports testified that May was only one of three months since 2010 that the job creation had drifted below 50,000 in a month since the recession.

Again, we concede this was not a good month for job growth.

Needless to say, the banks won’t be raising the interest rate in June as they had hoped.

However, we ask how the poor jobs report effects the house hunters and mortgage seekers.  Perhaps, it does not affect them as much as the alarmists would have us believe, especially not in our Orlando area.

Jobs Report:  Only One Factor In the Economy

Here are a few reasons we think the labor statistics should be taken with a calm regard and a grain of salt—and against the grain of common reactionary thought:    

1. According Orlando Business Journal, Harry Holzer, former chief economist at the Department of Labor stated “…wage growth has been decent – perhaps suggesting that the average employed worker is doing better…Jobs Report is only one par of data for Dream .

2. Here in Orlando, the supply of available houses is increasing.  Finding your dream home is getting easier, as inventory is increasing.  Instead of reading a stack of conflicting jobs report statistics, just look out your car window and see the new construction.

3. In our area, mortgage interest rates continue to be low, and good tax incentives still exist for home owners.

In our next blog, Part 2 of this series, we will be revealing more reasons for Floridians to concentrate on more important financial concepts than one weak jobs report.

By the way, Palm State Mortgage thinks there is a little known, but very key issue behind some of the statistics of the weak job report.  Discover the key next week if you visit us again.

In Part II, we show you more Views behind the News, Blues and Issues of our financial recovery as a city, state and nation.