Jim O'Neill, Columnist

Nobody Should Care About U.S. Jobs Numbers

U.S. payrolls: Not long ago, a lot revolved around predicting that number, waiting for that number, analyzing that number and (one way or another) betting on that number. But times change.

February 20, 2014 at 11:20 PM UTC

By Jim O'Neill

Jim O'Neill worked for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. from 1995 until 2013, serving most recently as chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and as the firm's chief economist from 2001 to 2011. Before joining Goldman Sachs, he was head of global research at Swiss Bank Corp. O'Neill is the creator of the BRIC acronym, which was derived from his thesis that Brazil, Russia, India and China would dominate growth in emerging markets. He is a member of the boards of the Brussels-based policy-research centers Itinera Institute and Bruegel. He earned a degree in economics from Sheffield University in 1978 and a doctorate from the University of Surrey in 1982. He lives in London.

One day soon, China will be the world's biggest importer. Photographer: Lam Yik Fei/Bloomberg

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You might be surprised how much of my 32-year career in the City of London was spent thinking about a single economic indicator: U.S. nonfarm payrolls. A lot revolved around predicting that number, waiting for that number, analyzing that number and (one way or another) betting on that number. But times change.

The preoccupation was always hazardous, of course. The payrolls figure was extremely hard to call, and it was often revised a lot, too. In the late 1980s, a primary dealer went bust because of a bad bet on payrolls; one of the culprits later told me that the number as subsequently revised would have made the bet pay off. In any event, back then the indicator measured something that really mattered in global economic terms: the state of the U.S. labor market. These days, I wonder why anyone outside the U.S. pays that much attention.