Suitably Flip

January Jobs

Lots of noise and rebalancing in the January report, as always, but the headline headline came in weaker than expected at 157k nonfarm payrolls (private payrolls: 166k).  Unemployment ticked up from 7.8% to 7.9% (vs. expectations of 7.7%).

Naturally, futures extended their gains in response to the news, perhaps because it means the Fed's 6.5% jobless target has slipped even further over the horizon, allowing unprecedented accommodation to continue unabated forever and ever.

The bright spot:

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised from +161,000 to +247,000, and the change for December was revised from +155,000 to +196,000.

Those are healthy revisions, but the perverse result is that we're left with a fairly frightening 3-month decelerating trend (247k, 196k, 157k).

Comments

January Jobs

Lots of noise and rebalancing in the January report, as always, but the headline headline came in weaker than expected at 157k nonfarm payrolls (private payrolls: 166k).  Unemployment ticked up from 7.8% to 7.9% (vs. expectations of 7.7%).

Naturally, futures extended their gains in response to the news, perhaps because it means the Fed's 6.5% jobless target has slipped even further over the horizon, allowing unprecedented accommodation to continue unabated forever and ever.

The bright spot:

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised from +161,000 to +247,000, and the change for December was revised from +155,000 to +196,000.

Those are healthy revisions, but the perverse result is that we're left with a fairly frightening 3-month decelerating trend (247k, 196k, 157k).