Why we may never see the October jobs data

HousingWire

On today’s episode, Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler talks with Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami about the government’s announcement it may never release the October jobs data and what other economic data he's looking at.  Related to this episode:  ⁠White House official says October jobs and inflation data are likely to never be released⁠ https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/white-house-official-says-october-jobs-and-inflation-data-are-likely-to-never-be-released/ar-AA1Qoeh9?ocid=BingNewsSerp ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HousingWire | YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDD_3y3LvU60vac7eki-6Q ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠More info about HousingWire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://lnk.bio/housingwire  To learn more about Trust & Will, click ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://trustandwill.com/  The HousingWire Daily podcast brings the full picture of the most compelling stories in the housing market reported across HousingWire. Each morning, listen to editor in chief Sarah Wheeler talk to leading industry voices and get a deeper look behind the scenes of the top mortgage and real estate.

Transcript

00:00welcome everyone my guest today is lead analyst logan modashami to talk about the jobs data that

00:11could get us lower mortgage rates if only we had it first i want to thank our sponsor trust and

00:17will for making this episode possible logan welcome back to the podcast sarah we have we

00:22have like breaking news okay beth hammock just made a statement that she's concerned about the

00:29labor market oh okay this is good i don't believe her i do not believe her one bit this is this is

00:36the cleveland fed president who we have picked on for many many months now who literally weeks ago

00:42said the labor market is robust to uh you know there's some maybe little strains to the labor

00:51market to uh okay maybe uh i'm concerned about the labor market if you are the cleveland fed president

00:59and you have aggregate data that we all as analysts are looking at and you go from i mean it's bad

01:06enough that powell did it but if you went from robust to not really not that much of a concern

01:13maybe there's small stuff to okay now i'm concerned within a very small amount of time something is

01:19wrong with your model this is why i always say that i always want people's forecast but i want their

01:24model to figure out where they're going and within a span of just weeks we went from robust to i'm

01:31concerned i don't believe it i think she's just got a lot of feedback on hey listen you keep on saying

01:37this it doesn't look good to the american public she's got a wall street background so i know how that

01:42that is with uh on inflation over labor sometimes so in this context she came out today i have labor

01:49concerns i literally put anchorman's uh gif where he goes i don't believe you you know out there so

01:58uh that that was shocking but don't buy it okay well this speaks to the larger issue that we're all

02:04finding out this week is that even when the government um is open i guess it's officially

02:10open now we will not see october labor data apparently explain this one to me because i don't really

02:16understand what's going on you know one of my um counterparts in london uh well-known economist

02:23said i could tell you what happened in england in 1840 in may but the trials report and we can't

02:30figure out what happened in october um so the first response that a lot of people said to me doesn't trump

02:39want lower rates if the report is bad won't that help him out because all he wants is lower rates

02:45and you and i had this conversation as well uh recently but i look at it in this standpoint

02:53i'm not here trying to justify it i'm just telling you that this is maybe a hypothesis on why this is

03:00not happening um maybe there's some logistic issues okay just let's take the logistic issues

03:06out of the side out of the side for for a little bit um the president most likely is about to lose his

03:14tariffs to the supreme court the polling isn't as good because affordability issues with stuff right

03:21goods inflation has been rising so there's there's ticket items that are rising in costs

03:28and now the labor data is not showing much growth in some reports are negative

03:34at this period of time he's got to defend the tariffs because if if the supreme court goes against

03:41them and then he tries some other thing to to do it you know uh it's again it gets a harder sell when

03:49you come out and say if goldman sachs is right and goldman sachs said you know we're gonna have 50 000

03:53jobs lost in october and then the growth rate of inflation is not at two percent i i believe if there

03:59was a try to try to figure this out why why does he just not show it because rates will go lower

04:05it's because there's a lot of things going on right now and these kind of headlines with trying

04:11to fight for the tariffs uh um not the best backdrop at this current moment and again we have a lot of

04:17noise right we're throwing two thousand dollar checks at people we're doing 50-year mortgages you

04:24know we're saying that if you take the tariffs back it's it's going to cost us three trillion dollars

04:29i mean so there's a lot going on here there's always a lot going on anyway but if if you're

04:38trying to make sense of it all uh um with the mindset that why does he just show the reports if

04:43it's if it's bad jobs rates will go down there are other things that are happening at this very moment

04:49that is a little bit different than let's say this happened six months ago right so he so what you're

04:54saying he doesn't want the bad press of like oh jobs are you know you're losing jobs under under trump

04:58or losing jobs even though that's that would actually be better i mean that gives the federal

05:04reserve the justification they need to to lower rates it really gets him what he wants let me tell

05:09you what the federal reserve would think about something like this let's say i i i mean i'm pretty

05:14sure the federal reserve doesn't take the two thousand dollar check seriously unless it's actually sent

05:18out but if you are still in a tariff world and you send checks to people and especially the lower

05:27income uh bracket that's a that's a noticeable chunk of money they would say that just keeps

05:35inflation firmer it's a stimulus right it's a stimulus the velocity of it is really big right

05:43you know when rates go up and down the velocity of rates are to a certain kind of income bracket

05:49but if you send checks to people you know that's money that they're going to use uh and they higher

05:57the income bracket the less propensity to spend because i mean you have you have such so much spare

06:02capacity and you're spending like you want but on the lower income side yeah that's that's that's

06:08noticeable so um i'm sure the fed is like that's the last thing they want to deal with but when you

06:15have a little bit of turmoil right well you got a government shutdown you know some of the pollings

06:24isn't good you know uh um people are complaining about affordability and then all of a sudden the

06:31jobs data is getting weaker you know there's just a lot here so what do you checks let's just throw

06:36checks to people right because the tariff is really the his trump just loves tariff more than anything

06:42because he likes new york bully ball and if you if you can't bully other countries unless you can do

06:48tariff so if you take that away from him you know especially this is his last you know presidency

06:54it might not be as fun anymore you know so i there's there's there's a lot of noise out here and

07:03whenever whenever government says we'll give you checks and we'll we'll do this with mortgages and stuff

07:08like this there's a back drop story so for those that are asking why doesn't he just show the report

07:13if it is bad it gets lower rates i think that the tariff thing is uh getting a lot of his attention

07:19right now i think if um if you cared about housing right like for everyone in housing we're like

07:23show it get us the lower rates let's do it let's let's get this uh ball rolling but um you know you're

07:30talking about the political considerations on top of that political economic theory i hate it

07:35you know i know you do it's just i tell you it's just one of the beauties of my life is i try to

07:42avoid people as much as possible which is kind of crazy because i deal with the black ass men on x and

07:47like others and youtube comment sections but there's a lot of noise and there's a lot of

07:52ideological advantages for political consideration so it's politics it's like the word politics many

07:58bloodsuck and parasites so you do it to try to gain as much voting things or try to move a policy agenda

08:03this gets into a really murky world with economics so uh i i i have to talk about it i'd rather not but

08:13this is my interpretation of of maybe not wanting to show the reports or you know there's just the

08:19logistics they just literally don't have the people but there's the between the shutdown and

08:24the supreme court and the pollings you could see kind of what's going on because the labor data is

08:29getting softer right you know this is a noticeable and also they're starting to become more of a

08:36discussion about you know what's this story about this labor force growth i mean are we really going

08:41to be a very low job creation uh economy for the next hundred years i mean is this is this true you

08:49know do we just not have enough so presidents come and go economic cycles are here 24 7 you know

08:58uh uh we lived through very crazy times uh for the last uh 200 years but there's a lot happening at

09:07this very moment so um kind of take that into consideration more than a maybe a traditional economic take

09:14right now that hey let let him show the reports if they're weaker rates go down that's what he wants

09:19right so it's a little bit uh bosch painting out there right now i would agree with that 100 okay well

09:28what other data are you looking at this week there's not much i mean they're really you know uh i mean

09:36not having the inflation report not having the retail sales you know um we have own our own data

09:45lines you know we look at tax receipts from the irs on the weekly side we we look at other private

09:51sector data uh to see what's going on and to me it's just things are holding up but i i would tell you

09:59this on this is a good good good one of the one of the reports that did came come out this week the

10:05small business confidence index uh came out very very pro trump very conservative i mean when trump

10:13wins the presidency this thing goes vertical i mean you've never seen a bunch of happy guys except for

10:18you know maybe if your team won the super bowl so with that context um some people are saying well

10:26the small business uh index is saying that they're they have a hard time finding labor

10:31and then if you look at the same report they're not really they have no plans to raise wages

10:38if you really had like a problem hiring you know needing labor you would raise wages to uh compete for

10:46labor i wonder if the small business community is thinking uh where did our labor go you know uh population

10:56growth slowing down is one thing but just imagine if less immigration and kicking people out there are

11:01probably sectors uh of the economy in certain states where it's a little bit harder maybe to find work

11:09uh or find labor so uh that that's an interesting uh um report and that's something that we can think

11:17about this year next year and going out for 10 years uh uh is the labor force growth story

11:24really legit where we can't have big reports and how does the small business community look at this

11:30because uh if their confidence isn't really booming anymore and they're saying we can't find labor but

11:36they're not raising wages it's just something to think about that's one of the data lines this week

11:40that we did get that you know it did it did make me ponder that question about what do they really

11:47think at this at this stage you've done a lot um of demographic work it's central to what you do

11:54and you've always said you know we're in a better spot than a lot of other countries because we have

11:58a younger labor force what is this you know that obviously hasn't changed in the last little bit but

12:04the immigration part has changed maybe so so how how do you look at us and our labor force going

12:10forward in the next 20 years right now we have an unbelievable advantage because we have millennials

12:16and gen z and like i've always said at many events for again sarah you didn't know me in the last

12:24decade you did reject me for the award but uh in the last in the last decade i always said that

12:30millennials and gen z are bigger than the total population of japan and 40 of japan's population will be

12:37dead by the end of the century and they sell more adult diapers and baby diapers

12:41so economics is demographics and productivity the rest the stamp collecting that's the basic

12:50foundation of of economics your your demographics and how productive uh your uh your people are

12:57um there are sectors of the economy that have very poor productivity construction if you look at

13:03the saddest chart i have in america is if you take the productivity growth of subsectors in america going

13:11back to 1950 uh adjusted to time the construction is so negative i mean it is just it's an abomination

13:19but productivity can help an economy grow and become more efficient uh so if we are losing some of our

13:28labor force growth then we better get productive to offset it uh or else small business might be

13:37complaining about labor but not raising wages to get it connect the dots there so we always will have

13:44an advantage over other countries like china's worse than us japan's worse than us europe's worse than us

13:51so this is our our century india becomes a very interesting country going out for the next 50 to 70

13:58years uh um they have a lot of potential because so much of the population is younger but

14:04mother demographics takes us all at the end right uh china uh their prime age population growth

14:11uh peaked in uh uh 2015 uh japan was in the late 1990s this doesn't mean that your economy is going

14:18to blow up and be terrible but there's there's limits to what you you can do with your labor force

14:23the fact that japan has finally accepted immigration shows how bad that situation is for a country and a

14:30civilization that has really despised immigration more than other places but what's the saying we have

14:37here sarah no country has a dory and gray labor market right we all age nature wins we leave the

14:46workforce and we die right and in death and in retirement that workforce needs to be replaced and in parts

14:54of the country where demand is picking up if you have an aging workforce and you're replacing them to a degree

14:59and you need more labor you got to get those people to come in there and um you know that's a lot of a lot

15:05of states want uh uh labor you know you and i when we went to speak in new hampshire right you know and

15:14they needed doctors and and nurses and and people to come in there uh uh and uh uh kind of uh get the labor

15:23force growing there i mean there are restaurants that couldn't open until certain times because they don't

15:28have enough so so it is it is such a key factor uh to my work and i've always said that that's always

15:35been our advantage but if it is true that you know this huge labor force growth that we've had through

15:41immigration stuff if that's gonna start to close down that's something to think about in the future

15:46for sure but here boy we millennials gen z you know that gives us such an advantage over other countries

15:53we have replacement workers and replacement consumers this doesn't mean that our population growth is

15:57booming uh but it's still growing but you know it is something to think about over the next uh 20 or 30

16:05years so one of the things that's tricky about immigration i think when you're looking at population

16:10is that not it's not only the people who are coming in so those raw numbers but the fact that people who

16:16are coming in a lot of times have more children on average than people who've been here for a while

16:20um it's it's just the way things go and so if you have the immigration slowing down uh for other

16:26reasons or being blocked for other reasons you also have less people being born here correct as a country

16:31we're having less and less kids uh and if you look at the history of global economics a country that gets

16:39wealthier has less children and uh if you even look at africa they are starting to have less and less kids

16:47uh out there so it is just a natural progression of an economy that grows and has more more wealth

16:56tends to have less children i mean a lot of this i mean 150 years ago you know people needed big

17:02families for farming and stuff like that and you just don't don't need them anymore uh uh out there

17:08productivity has changed agriculture in a big way uh so but in general terms we're having less and less

17:14kids uh out there so we're getting married a little bit later in life it's a little bit much different

17:21than the post-world war ii baby boom where you know you get married very young you have kids very young

17:26and you move on uh everything gets pushed out in the curve of age especially the marriage data the

17:33marriage data is something i've i've showed those charts for 10 years and this you know that's so much

17:38of housing economics out there people you know renting dating having sex getting married having

17:44kids and then dual household incomes and usually it's in the 30 to 35 by the way there's a lot of

17:50people now that are figuring out that the nar's uh survey data is a little bit i was gonna say we

17:56might need to revisit that i mean it's it's it's when i started i i could tell you this when i started

18:03sharing them uh like how they track the data and everyone's like what wait a second really and i

18:09said yeah and i said well this this explains this and now i'm okay well like do a little do just a

18:15very short explanation of what you're talking about right now so so the nar came out comes out with this

18:20yearly survey and they basically said first-time homebuyers are age 40 and the first-time homebuyer

18:26percentage is 21 so i've kind of just i mean i i know this survey is wrong compared to the data but

18:33you know this was a little bit more of an egregious look at it so what i did is i kept on i just actually

18:40share the nar's mythology how they do it you know how they track this and it's 173 173 000 people take

18:48the survey it's 120 questions lord if you give me 12 questions of survey i'm not answering it okay so 120

18:54i'm sorry um that is rough could you imagine young people that can that can maybe watch

19:01selling sunset for like three minutes and then move on to something else on youtube and you're asking

19:06younger people to fill out 120 come on now in any in any case um it had a 3.5 uh response rate it's

19:16like 6 000 people and i could see baby boomers who have nothing to do just go i'm gonna fill this out

19:21let me get really excited you know wait for their bingo game but here i think then all of a sudden

19:27all of a sudden people are like oh it was such a surprise reaction to it that everyone started and

19:34now i see this everywhere that people are like wait a second the new york fed has tracked this for a long

19:40time and they say the age is like this and this and you know so my concern was that if rates went down

19:45and mortgage demand picked up because first-time homebuyers financed then that age falls down you

19:51know noticeably and that's not correct either so it's a big part of my work that you know we do

19:55things a little bit later but but the 21 first-time homebuyer percentage and then to have like the

20:03monthly reports show 29 30 31 percent you know something's wrong there you can't have your entire

20:11year be 10 percent higher on a monthly basis versus a survey so why is a survey wrong

20:18i can tell you why it's wrong it's how their account sarah you know this about me i i'm not a

20:24big fan of surveys i mean i've seen this you don't like surveys i've seen this one survey for like 15

20:29years nobody has 400 in their checking account and we're all broke and i just it is it is one of the

20:36most it's it's it's such an abomination that some of these surveys that get a lot of play

20:41and like the sample size is so small and you just like so um just i i urge everyone take surveys with

20:52a grain of salt but i know nobody likes to read go read how they actually take it like read the sample

20:58size read it and then maybe it makes sense hard data like credit data we like right because credit

21:04data absolutely it's everything that's out there and uh okay so what's the what's the fed uh first

21:10time homebuyer rate if it's not 40 what has it been it's been like 30 to 35 for the whole century

21:16it's actually gone a little bit lower over the recent time so and if you actually track the

21:23demographic profile of first-time homebuyers and what they do would do when they get married and

21:27that makes a little bit more sense to me i mean that was my whole thing in the last decade you

21:32know we do things a lot in the 30s now where we used to do it in the 20s but it like this jump to

21:3940 and then the 21 on a survey with six six thousand six thousand people sir

21:45so many baby boomers probably filled that out so i'm just a little bit suspect but i'm glad to see

21:51that that conversation is happening right because we acknowledge his power reading is a good thing

21:56clearly nobody has ever read the survey and how they track it for a long time very few people talk

22:02about it i just never really paid much attention to but that moving that survey that first time

22:07homebuyer percentage down to 21 and then every doomer in the world saying that but then it's like

22:12the last three months were like 30 so i just try to bring a little bit of perspective in that so

22:18for for the first time i actually got involved in this discussion and said come on now uh and just one

22:25other survey thing in housing uh they came out with a survey that said that you know there's an

22:30additional 16 to 17 000 cost to be a homeowner uh but it's like near 11 000 of maintenance a year

22:37uh and everybody was like what and i was like listen guys if you had a gremlin in your house living with

22:44you and all the times that you got damage you got your house damaged and with the cost of everything

22:49yeah you you you would spend 11 000 on maintenance i was like 11k you know survey that's a lot i yeah yeah

22:58i mean even even when the doomers are saying hey that doesn't sound right just kind of remember the

23:04surveys get a lot of play these days kind of like get in there and read how they do it and just

23:10take all surveys with a grain of salt it's a good thing grain of salt grain of salt economics is

23:17something we should all embrace oh my gosh we're about to see merch on grain of salt economics it's

23:21going to happen now now i know logan as always thank you so much for being with us and we will

23:26talk again soon pleasure sarah

23:28you

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