Big NFP Data Coming ?
While we await a better understanding if exactly what happened yesterday, let’s remember that today is a NFP day.
March 2010′s +162k was likely the first of many six figure gainers in Non Farm Payroll. The Bloomberg consensus for April is +190k, with forecasts ranging from gains of 75,000 to 300,000. Estimates for the unemployment rate were 9.5% to 9.8%.
Upside risks are the census workers. We could see an additional 100k new jobs built into the monthly data. Any downside surprise raises the possibility that the recovery is weaker and perhaps non self-sustaining. We would need to see more than a single data point to adopt this position.
One other thing: Each month, some parrot will describe NFP as as lagging indicator. As applied to the headline number, that statement is generally correct.
It is, however, useless and misleading. We are not limited to only reviewing headline data — we can take apart the underlying components that are NOT laggards. As we have beaten to death over the entire course of the recession, various aspects of NFP are leading, not lagging factors:
• Temporary Worker Hiring — Temp Help is now up for 7 consecutive months; It imp-roved long before the monthly data series turned positive.
• Hours worked — off of the records lows, but not by much. We interpret this to mean that the jobs recovery will be a long slow affair.
• Wages: Flat as Kansas — with big implications for the savings rate and consumer spending
By now, you should know the drill: BLS report will be released at 8:30am, comments to follow.
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May 7th, 2010 at 8:34 am
+290,00 but unemployment up to 9.9%
re:
Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 290,000 in April, the unemployment rate
edged up to 9.9 percent, and the labor force increased sharply, the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in manufactur-
ing, professional and business services, health care, and leisure and hospi-
tality. Federal government employment also rose, reflecting continued hiring
of temporary workers for Census 2010.
Household Survey Data
In April, the number of unemployed persons was 15.3 million, and the unem-
ployment rate edged up to 9.9 percent. The rate had been 9.7 percent for the
first 3 months of this year. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for whites (9.0 percent)
edged up in April, while the rates for adult men (10.1 percent), adult women
(8.2 percent), teenagers (25.4 percent), blacks (16.5 percent), and Hispanics
(12.5 percent) showed little or no change. The jobless rate for Asians was
6.8 percent, not seasonally adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) con-
tinued to trend up over the month, reaching 6.7 million. In April, 45.9 percent
of unemployed persons had been jobless for 27 weeks or more. (See table A-12.)
Among the unemployed, the number of reentrants to the labor force rose by
195,000 over the month. (See table A-11.)
May 7th, 2010 at 8:54 am
B E Auuutiful…U6 ticks up 0.2%, flat hourly earnings, bulk (+166k) of creation in the service sector, when ISM non-manufacturing had the employement component below 50, and of course +188k birth/death model when we keep hearing that small businesses are let’s say, “having a hard time”…basically, 66k census, + 32k ADP + 188k “model” = 286k…and that’s your number…yeah, everything’s rollling baby…
May 8th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
This sounds like weak recovery, which means easy money, which means the game continues, which means this sucker dip ends monday…..back on the march to 12k! Or am I misreading the data?