New Delhi, Nov. 10 -- Yet again, the economic soothsayers couldn't have been more wrong about the latest report on the state of the US labour market released last week, adding to a mounting string of errant forecasts and raising an obvious question: Why do the people who make a living forecasting one of the most important data points in the whole economy get it so wrong so often?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said non-farm payrolls expanded by 165,000 in October, more than twice the median estimate of 70,000 in a Bloomberg survey of more than 70 economists. None of the forecasts came close, with the highest estimate being 131,000.

Should we be concerned about the consistently wide divergence between what economists anticipate and...