If the U.S. government is going to conduct two separate surveys to estimate the most closely watched economic indicator in the world, they should at least tell us roughly the same story, right? Apparently, that’s too much to hope for. Or, at least, it has been lately. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Household Survey, which estimates the size of the U.S. population and labor force, and is used to calculate the unemployment rate, has been dropping in recent months. In fact, over the past year, it’s shown a close to zero net increase in total employment. That’s a far cry from the Establishment Survey, which canvases employers to measure the total number of jobs in the economy. That figure has been increasing by more than 200,000 per month, on average, over the past year. What explains the gap, and which one is correct? Historically, when these surveys have disagreed to this extent, it has usually paid to give more weight to the Establishment figures. Over the past several years, with a large influx of immigrants into the United States, it has likely become more challenging to estimate total population growth and sort out how many people are working and how many are not. A failure to account for the rising share of foreign-born workers may explain the bulk of the divergence we’ve seen in recent months. Macro strategists must understand how the underlying data is calculated and presented in order to make educated decisions (sometimes guesses) about what is actually going on in the real economy. In this case, our best guess is that job creation has remained strong as the workforce has continued to grow over the past several quarters.

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Macro Risk Strategist @ Balyasny Asset Management (New York)

The Macro Risk Strategist will work closely with select macro portfolio managers and their teams to understand and analyze their portfolio and risk. They will also develop, maintain, and leverage models for option pricing in order to better quantify unique portfolio risks.

Global Macro Research Credit Associate @ Goldman Sachs (New York)

The Macro Research team focuses on the intersection between economics and financial markets across a wide class of assets including equities, rates, FX, credit, mortgages and commodities. We are seeking an experienced credit strategist to join the Credit Strategy Research team.

Macro Quantitative Analyst @ Point72 (New York)

The successful candidate will play a crucial role in supporting our quantitative research and production efforts, utilizing their expertise in Python programming and quantitative analysis to contribute to the development and enhancement of our trading strategies. 

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