Massive jobs revision, Kamala's wealth tax, polls vs prediction markets, end of race-based admissions

After opening banter, Jason Calacanis reports that the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised nonfarm payroll growth down by about 30%: roughly 818,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months to March 2024, or about 2.1 million instead of 2.9 million. He calls it the largest revision since 2009, led by professional and business services (358,000), with cuts in leisure, hospitality, manufacturing, retail and transportation. He still concludes the country is in great shape, citing unemployment near 4%.

David Sacks says he predicted this and puts cumulative restatements over the past year at about 1.2 million. His 2023 skepticism rested on anecdote rather than data: tech layoffs, stalled real estate projects, and scarce refinancing amid high borrowing costs. His central argument is statistical: if revisions were neutral they would split like coin flips, yet in his telling they have all gone down. He reads the backlash to his tweet as a sign people sensed the numbers did not match the economy.

Calacanis offers a silver lining: a weaker labor market is what the Fed wanted. Chamath Palihapitiya agrees the economy is slower than believed and expects the data to tip September toward a cut, possibly 50 basis points, but warns that wrong employment figures imply wrong GDP figures. His core complaint:

The problem is we have bad data.

He finds it insane that, with payroll and SaaS systems everywhere, the largest economy remains this unpredictable. He proposes a DARPA-style challenge in which firms such as Stripe and Gusto estimate the number, arguing that would be more reliable than BLS. Drawing on his years as a derivatives trader, he recalls tens or hundreds of billions moving on each payroll release, which he says now looks close to random.

David Friedberg frames the Fed's balancing act around a 2% inflation target and roughly 4% unemployment, now at 4.2 to 4.3%. He says trading markets price a 100% chance of 75 basis points of cuts by end-2024 and 70% for a full point, while the prediction market for September shows a 20% chance of a 50-point cut and 6% of none.