Compared to the news of 810000 American jobs disappearing overnight, what caused more uproar in the investment circle in the United States yesterday may be the increasingly lost "ethics" of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
At 22:30 Beijing time on Wednesday evening, the annual preliminary revised data on non farm payroll employment in the United States was released more than half an hour later than the originally scheduled time (22:00). Just as market traders were puzzled by this reason and eagerly awaited the release of this heavyweight data, at least three international investment banks managed to obtain this crucial data privately.
According to local media reports afterwards, after the US Bureau of Labor Statistics initially failed to release the preliminary benchmark revision of non farm employment data as planned, both Mizuho Financial Group and BNP Paribas called the department and directly obtained the relevant figures over the phone. In addition, according to a source familiar with the matter, Nomura Holdings' economic research team also obtained the "answer" through a phone call.
Yelena Shulyatyeva, a senior American economist at BNP Paribas, said that she has also repeatedly refreshed web pages when data did not appear on time. Then we called several public numbers and they (BLS staff) gave us the data
Steven Ricchiuto, Chief American Economist at Mizuho, also conducted the same operation. Ricchiuto pointed out that "after learning about the delay in data, we called to get the numbers, and later the data finally appeared on their website," he said.
As the news of BLS privately releasing data to some companies over the phone spread among traders, anger in the entire US investment community quickly spread overnight.
This data was finally released at 22:30 Beijing time. The revised results show that in the 12 months ending March 2024, the non farm employment data has been preliminarily revised downwards by 818000 people, which is equivalent to a monthly decrease of about 68000 people proportionally. This is also the largest downward revision since 2009.
The above data released by BLS is crucial for traders who are trying to assess inflation and economic trends. And once the data was publicly released, it quickly sparked a trading frenzy in the market. The price of US Treasury bonds rose immediately after the data was released, as this key report fueled bets that the Federal Reserve would start cutting interest rates from next month. In addition, between 22:30 and 22:35 Beijing time, approximately 20000 S&P 500 index futures contracts changed hands, an increase of 58% from the previous five minutes.
The American investment community is burning with anger
No wonder everyone is angry about this matter, "said Nancy Tengler, CEO of Laffer Tengler Investments." The whole thing is filled with a sense of incompetence
Some industry insiders and institutions who obtained data in advance through certain channels are even deeply puzzled by this matter.
The well-known financial blog website ZeroHedge pointed out, "We actually received the leaked data through its expert network at 10:24 am Eastern Time (22:24 Beijing Time), but we dare not publish it to our premium subscribers because we thought BLS was not so foolish and incompetent - to publish data to a single questioner instead of simultaneously publishing it to the world. But in the end, it turned out that BLS was even more incompetent than we thought
Interestingly, ZeroHedge even jokingly posted the contact numbers of BLS related departments on social media at 22:26 Beijing time.
Troy Ludtka, senior US economist at SMBC Nikko Securities USA, said, "I'm not just a little annoyed
He is also one of the people who eagerly await the release of public data. Government agencies must not selectively release key market impacting information to some agents and brokers over the phone, while keeping other agents and brokers in the dark. This is a desecration of the concept of a balanced market based on fairness and information accessibility
It is worth mentioning that this is already the third misunderstanding or scandal incident that BLS has exposed in less than half a year.
In May of this year, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) accidentally released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for April 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Given that this data is currently almost the most influential set of macroeconomic indicators for the global financial market in the United States, this "wrong turn event" further raised doubts about the security and fairness of the institution's sensitive data release at that time.
In April of this year, it was reported by the media that an economist from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) had frequent communications with large Wall Street institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock regarding data on key inflation indicators in the United States.
Regarding the delay in the release of the latest non farm payroll adjustment data overnight, a BLS spokesperson stated on Wednesday that the agency has notified the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Labor of this matter. The integrity of data release is BLS's top priority, and we are closely reviewing our procedures to ensure that such situations do not occur again in the future