Looking into Labor Market Strength
A huge jobs number last Friday … are we getting the full picture from this headline number? … more conflicting data from a headhunting firm … a big payday for Speculator subscribers Last Friday, we discovered that July brought a surprise jump in jobs added to the economy. Whereas economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast 258,000 new jobs, the number came in more than double that, at 528,000. Keep in mind, the experts botched it the prior month, too. In July, we learned that the U.S. added 372,000 new jobs in June. That dwarfed the forecast of 268,000. These back-to-back months of positive surprises suggests significant strength in the labor market. (Or significant weakness from our economic forecasting experts, but we’ll go with “labor market strength.”) In fact, based on last Friday’s data, the number of people unemployed has finally returned to the pre-pandemic February 2020 level, which happens to be a 50-year low. This is good news. But then how do we explain the significant increase in the number of layoffs and|or hiring freezes today?
Looking into Labor Market Strength
A huge jobs number last Friday … are we getting the full picture from this headline number? … more conflicting data from a headhunting firm … a big payday for Speculator subscribers Last Friday, we discovered that July brought a surprise jump in jobs added to the economy. Whereas economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast 258,000 new jobs, the number came in more than double that, at 528,000. Keep in mind, the experts botched it the prior month, too. In July, we learned that the U.S. added 372,000 new jobs in June. That dwarfed the forecast of 268,000. These back-to-back months of positive surprises suggests significant strength in the labor market. (Or significant weakness from our economic forecasting experts, but we’ll go with “labor market strength.”) In fact, based on last Friday’s data, the number of people unemployed has finally returned to the pre-pandemic February 2020 level, which happens to be a 50-year low. This is good news. But then how do we explain the significant increase in the number of layoffs and|or hiring freezes today?