Audio here, at 2:30 approximately. He also says private NFP gain is down to +56K, while private ex-health care and social services (all essentially government), was only up +12K. Here’s the picture I get looking at current vintage/latest release:
Figure 1: Change in nonfarm payroll employment (blue), in private NFP (tan), in private NFP ex-health care and social services employment (green), all in 000’s, s.a. Source: BLS via FRED and authors calculations.
I couldn’t figure out how Kudlow got his numbers. Then I realized he’d incorporated the downward revisions from previous months, so he should’ve said “on net” or something like that. He also mentioned the ISM and construction numbers (the same that Peter Schiff had mentioned). As I noted, these were not statistically significant changes. In any case, I’ve added Mr. Kudlow to the “recession camp” list.
More stuff from Kudlow: weird ways to calculate job gains, no recession in Dec. 2007, etc.
