This Week's Abelson Commentary

I love reading Abelson in Barron's every week. He is definitely tilted to the bearish side so you have to really analyze his arguments carefully. This week though I think he hit the nail on the head. The Employment report released yesterday used a rather large number for the birth / death factor that the Labor Department uses to calculate job losses for April. The birth / death adjustment seems to be a guess as to how many new businesses were formed (births) and how many businesses went out of business (deaths). According to Abelson's article this estimated number added about 200,000+ jobs to the payroll number. Had this number been zero the number of jobs lost to the economy would have approached 300,000. He astutely pointed out that the Labor Department estimated that finance jobs were created as well which does not blend well with the massive retrenchment occurring on Wall Street. Great stuff Mr. Abelson!