No ambiguity this month! Boom! Payrolls beat. Confirmed by Household Survey. Wage growth tame. Boom!
US Jobs
US Jobs
Friday, March 8, 2024
A headline beat, but January's blockbuster was revised lower. Tiny average hourly earnings growth. This is a very Fed-friendly report.
US Jobs
Friday, February 2, 2024
Crazy! A blockbuster payroll number is even bigger than it looks, given annual benchmark revisions. And employment in the household survey is reported as contracting, but it's actually expanding when you account for annual population control adjustments. But then again, without seasonal adjustments, America lost 2.6 million jobs in January. Fun with statistics! More later...
US Jobs
Friday, January 5, 2024
Solid payroll number, but on the back of downward revisions (and seemingly echoing the Fed's cognitive dissonance, a terrible month for the "household survey" right after last month's blockbuster). If you want to be hawkish, look no further than the large jump in average hourly earnings (fortunately, it's becoming increasingly obvious to sentient beings that this has no relation to inflation).
US Jobs
Friday, December 8, 2023
We're really trying to find something not to love in this November jobs report. Face it -- we're in a boom.
US Jobs
Friday, November 3, 2023
The perfect jobs report for the Fed. Unemployment rate up. Average hourly earnings way down. Downward revisions to the too-hot prior months. (And for the rest of us, it's not as recessionary as you're going to be hearing all day.)
US Jobs
Friday, October 6, 2023
A gigantic payroll beat that is just too good to be true. It's not confirmed by any other contemporaneous labor market indicator.
US Jobs
Friday, September 1, 2023
The Fed's going to love this. The unemployment rate rises as 736,000 people enter the workforce, enlarging the output gap and driving average hourly earnings growth down to the lowest rate in 19 months. And JOLTS jobs openings are suddenly back below trend. There's been no reason (by our reasoning) for the last few rate hike, and now there's good reason (by the Fed's reasoning) for further ones.
US Jobs
Friday, August 4, 2023
Payrolls missed, but the Fed isn't going to like this. Average hourly earnings growth was hot, on top of a big upward revision to June. But the Atlanta Wage-Tracker shows the gains for jobs-switchers are evaporating.
US Jobs
Friday, July 7, 2023
A small miss versus consensus -- and a big miss versus our model -- and all that with the bar lowered by large downward revisions to the prior months. But 209,000 payrolls is a solid number that passes the smell-test for credibility, and it is confirmed by the household survey at 273,000.