The employment numbers came in progressively better throughout the week. Friday, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the US added 216,000 jobs in December. The following industries reported the largest gains: Leisure and Hospitality (Hotels, Restaurants, Gambling, Live Entertainment) -- 40,000 Health Care -- 38,000 Local Governments -- 37,000 Professional and Business Services (Accounting, Architecture, Computers, Consulting) -- [...]
Remember the summer slowdown? Not last year’s, the first one. Back around July and August 2020 when what was supposed to have been a V-shaped recovery fell way off that trend. Instead, blamed on something with COVID, the US (and global economy) limped its way toward the end of that year just in time for its sugar-rush restart via helicopter.Twenty-twenty’s [...]
Fitting, in a way, that with so much having come out this week, the 10-year Treasury yield would end it at almost exactly the same price/yield as it began. In between, another epic CPI, ’74-style PPI commodities, and now rounding out the BLS inflation trifecta today was the fourth straight double-digit gain (year-over-year) in import prices. To the latter, the [...]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that in the month of March 2021 somewhere around 916,000 payrolls were added back to the economy. I have to disclaim the figure simply because the statistics used to create it aren’t really all that precise; piecing together data from a survey of 145,000 business establishments, a fraction of the economy’s total, the [...]
The Department of Labor attached a technical note to its weekly report on unemployment claims. The state of California has announced that it is suspending the processing of initial claims filed by (former) workers in that state. Government officials have decided to pause their efforts for two weeks so as to try and sort out what “might” be widespread fraud.The [...]
Honestly, what did everyone think was going to happen? I know, I’ve seen the analyst estimates. They were talking like another six or seven perhaps eight million job losses on top of the twenty-plus already gone. Instead, the payroll report (Establishment Survey) blew everything away, coming in both at two and a half million but also sporting a plus sign.The [...]
Is it already priced in? Depends, of course, on who you ask and more importantly which market is carrying out the presumed discounting. Stocks surged on the idea that though this is epic in its misery we’re already getting past the worst. Short run disruption, a big one, but nothing more. It’s almost preprogrammed at this point: the data for [...]
It’s about time. I’ve been writing for years that the payroll reports are, mostly, irrelevant. That’s never how they are received, though, some months wherein the new low for the unemployment rate or the blowout headline payroll figure send risk markets soaring. Not this month. Can you imagine what the last couple of reports would have done a year ago? [...]
President Trump mentioned the unemployment rate seven times during his third State of the Union address delivered on Tuesday. It was obvious why he did (though I had expected twice that number). His reelection largely stands on where enough people believe the economy stands. He was, after all, elected four years ago to fix what had been a very real [...]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has begun the process of updating its annual benchmarks. Actually, the process began last year and what’s happening now is that the government is releasing its findings to the public. Up first is the Household Survey, the less-watched, more volatile measure which comes at employment from the other direction. As the name implies, the [...]
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