Number Of US Jobs Added In May Revised Downward To 11,000 -- July 9, 2016

I may be misreading this but I don't think I am. From a New York Times story this morning:

The good news is that doesn’t appear to be the case. The blockbuster 287,000 jobs the Labor Department reported employers added in June surely overstates the pace of improvement, just as surely as the miserable 11,000 jobs reported to have been added in May understated it. (The May number was originally reported as an almost-as-miserable 38,000.) A Verizon strike contributed to the seesaw, but most of it is probably driven by a mix of sampling error and the sometimes weird effects of seasonal adjustment.

If you encounter a paywall, see this post.

If I am reading the NYT story correctly, the number of jobs reported in May, originally reported to be 38,000, was in fact ... 11,000.

If that is accurate ... OMG.

Yes, this short post gets a "staggering" tagline.

The writer blames the "miserable" May jobs number on:

• the Verizon strike (as if strikes are rare as hen teeth)
• sampling error
• "sometimes weird effects of seasonal adjustment"

I can think of other explanations.