Bureau of Lying Statistics Bespoke Jobs Report

On the surface, it was an blockbuster jobs report, certainly one which nobody expected. Starting at the top, the BLS reported that in January the US unexpectedly added 353K "jobs" - the most since January 2023 (when the print was 482K compared to 131K) , double the consensus forecast of 185K and more than the highest Wall Street estimate (300K from Natixis). In fact, this was a 4-sigma beat to estimate, unheard of in the past year.