US data has been largely below expectations for the past few months, ever since the end of QE3. Maybe economists will start to REALLY lower expectations and we can get some "above expectations" data in the weeks/months ahead.
The only "bright" spot in the data has been the payrolls data. I've watched analysts conclude that the economy is improving based on this data alone, and they're just waiting for the rest of the bad data (housing, manufacturing, sales, etc.) to catch up with the good payrolls data. In their mind, the payrolls data is correct, and the rest of the bad data are outliers.
There are several factors that pad the payrolls data. I am not an expert in this data because I've not studied it deeply, but here's what I know:
1. The government counts the underemployed - those working part-time or having low-quality jobs relative to their qualifications - as full-time jobs.
2. A person having 2 or more jobs is not counted as just 1 job. Eg. A person having 2 part-time jobs adds 2 jobs to the jobs data.
3. BLS has not subtracted the jobs lost in the energy sector sufficiently. According to them, only a handful of people lost jobs in the sector, whereas other independent research organisations reported much higher jobs losses.
4. BLS uses the birth-death model and make assumptions about job gains/losses. The numbers may be adjusted downwards months later, but by that time, the market is probably not paying as much attention to it.
Doesn't it make more sense that all the bad data are correct, and that the payrolls data is an outlier?
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