Excess Returns · Saturday, September 26, 2026
Eric Jackman expressed skepticism about the month-to-month changes in the jobs report, citing a decline in survey response rates (down to 43%) and the inherent margin of error (plus or minus 122,000 jobs at the 98th percentile confidence interval). He suggests that the survey is designed to estimate the absolute number of employees, not to track monthly changes, leading to potential inaccuracies.
“Um, that survey, you know, roughly like once you consider the fact that the survey response rate has been really structural decline, the BLS publishes this directly. You just go Google search it. Um, I think it's down to like 43%. Which is the response rate. And it's a survey. So they're not, they're not surveying everyone. Um, so the quality of the survey is declining.”
“But, you know, the 98th percentile confidence interval is 122,000 jobs, plus or minus. And so, you know, or, you know, plus or minus 122,000 jobs around what they actually found, which was I can't remember the number now. Like somewhere in the hundreds or something like that. So when you, you know, when you look at it like, you know, plus or minus 100,000. Like that's really accurate.”
“But then somehow, and maybe you can tell me why, throughout time, we have decided to say, well, now we're going to take this number, the actual number, which is BLS says is great, and now we're just going to do a markup of a month to change it. Which is not great. It has a tremendous amount of error because the survey is not designed for that.”