Keep in mind, this is a new ADP calculation method. (Don't like the numbers? Change the way its calculated!)
Haven't bothered reading the detail of changes. Just FYI.
ADP removed the BLS numbers as part of the calculation. They handle 25M employees so their sampling size is actually larger than what BLS uses. Goal of the change was to have it be independent from those BLS statistics. I'm not aware of them changing it "because they didn't like the numbers" I know your just expressing the general cynical attitude we view govt reporting (however this is not govt reporting).
While I may be an outlier here I don't agree with the board sentiment that even the govt numbers "are being politically manipulated. Most of people's angst about things like the UE rate is that they don't understand what the statistic was meant to represent in the first place let alone know how it's calculated. The media and politicians however most definitely manipulate the perception of economic statistics taking advantage of the fact people don't really understand them, making fooling them easy. We here are highly cynical bunch so view the entire process as being suspect instead of just accepting it for what it is.
It's not clown world that the middle class can suffer while UE rate is low. It's just one data point in a more complex system, and all the other examples low participation/low unemployment vs high participation/moderate unemployment etc.
CPI is a frustrating one because the avg joe when looking at it's methodology can make a pretty sound argument that it's not capturing the full picture, and it's not nor does it need to. It's just a data point. We tend to want things broken down too cleanly. Give me the GOODer index over 100= good below 100 bad and it encompasses all facet's of financial life across the entire wealth spectrum.
Just watch the angst on this board over it, always driven by a statistic that doesn't align with our current perception of an issue, if we want to elevate our emotional response beyond twitter outrage level then need to just take a deep breath and accept that single data points don't define the entirety of the picture. Not to get into politics but as an example Joe Biden can suck and inflation readings could come down. They aren't mutually exclusive, but we let emotional attachment to our own narrative cloud how we interpret data, and for anyone wanting to make money this is of no use.
In my market analysis I'm always trying to weigh the evidence. Many data points some in agreement some conflicting with a view, probably the most common mistake people make is to hone in one data point to the exclusion of others as a basis for opinion and action. We especially do this with negative data points, we give them more weight. Market can't go up because of X Y Z which are easily understood negative data points. YouTube/Twitter personalities are notorious with this, the data point is the headline. They explain the data point the viewers listens and discerns that it makes sense, where it goes off the rails is the conclusion. This therefor that. Completely ignoring that it's just a piece of the puzzle. Some of it can be IQ related, part of intelligence is being able to consider many factors and as you get closer to baseline human intelligence this becomes difficult as people want to boil issues down to less variables to make it more mentally compatible.
Too long winded to delve too much into it but it's rooted in our evolution as we benefit from brains that are able to more hyper focus on a particular thing and we also benefit from a smaller subset that is able to step further back and look at the big picture. One is not better than the other, an efficient machine needs both cogs and does not need very many of the latter. When it comes to markets however one human has a clear advantage over the other.