Non Farm Payrolls: There's Something About January

We don't know what it is, but recently there's something about the January non-farm payrolls report that economists just can't seem to figure out.  As shown in the table below, economists have overestimated the change in non-farm payrolls for January for seven straight years.  You have to go all the way back to 2003 to find a January employment report where the actual monthly change in non-farm payrolls exceeded economists forecasts.  Since 1998, the January jobs report has come in stronger than expected 33% of the time.  Surprisingly, there is no month since 1998 where the actual change in non-farm payrolls beats expectations more than half of the time.  That's a pretty dismal track record.

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