Fixed Income Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel explores the growing challenges faced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in producing accurate monthly employment figures amid a decline in survey participation by U.S. businesses. An extended drop-off in recent years in survey response rates and a resultant increased reliance on statistical imputation to fill gaps in hard data have led to unprecedented revisions in jobs data. This briefing discusses the risks of deteriorating macroeconomic survey quality to investment decision-making and calls for a holistic approach to economic analysis, blending official statistics with private data and idiosyncratic indicators. A multifaceted information-gathering strategy, Mr. Kimmel writes, is essential to navigating today’s uncertain economic landscape and making informed decisions.
Mr. Kimmel joined DoubleLine in 2013. He is an Analyst on the Macro Asset Allocation team. Mr. Kimmel is also a Strategist on the Fixed Income Asset Allocation (FIAA) Committee and a contributing member on our Global Asset Allocation Committee. Prior to DoubleLine, Mr. Kimmel was a Proprietary Trader at Gelber Group, trading currencies for the Foreign Currency Group. Prior to that, he was an Investment Banking Analyst in Morgan Stanley’s Mergers and Acquisitions Group. Mr. Kimmel holds a B.A. in Business Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and holds an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.
