The Daily Feather — The 23 Enigma

“I first heard of the 23 enigma from William S. Burroughs…According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another Captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23.”

Robert Anton Wilson

Proponents of the “23 enigma” hold that the number “23” commands outsized significance. This was even the subject of a 2007 film starring Jim Carrey -- The Number 23. Think about it: we have 23 pairs of chromosomes, there are 23 letters in the Latin alphabet, Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times… 23 is everywhere. More rational minds would say, however, that this is a textbook example of confirmation bias: the mind notices things that confirm what we already believe to be true.

Seeing the -23,000-headline nonfarm payroll print cross their screens Friday, “23 enigma” truthers added another arrow to their quivers. The shock fell short of every Bloomberg expectation and the 80,000-consensus. Making matters worse, both May and June were downwardly revised by a combined 103,000. Under the hood, (recession-proof?) Government was hit especially hard, registering a 53,000 decline that more than outweighed the meager 30,000 month-over-month (MoM) gain in the private sector. Local government (-57,000) and local government education in particular (-50,000) were the biggest losers.