In a recent San Francisco Federal Reserve Publication titled “Monetary Policy Stance is Tighter Than Fed Funds Rate,” the authors argue that the “all in” policy rate is actually higher than the Fed Funds rate would suggest. They open: “The Federal Reserve’s use of forward...
This week Jerome Powell tossed the market a bone by hinting that the Fed would be patient in raising short-term interest rates due to the continued slack in the US labor market and inflation that would likely be "transitory". Yet, today, the unemployment rate dropped...
This morning the monthly job openings and labor turnover (JOLTS) report was released, and it came in significantly shy of expectations. While Bloomberg’s consensus estimate was for 6.925 million job openings, the actual number came in at 6.423. It is important to keep in mind...
Last week we were presented with a fairly cold employment report with the number of job gains being lowest in 18 months and one of the lowest readings in the last decade. The problem is not necessarily the one weak employment report - which did...
Today's "blowout" employment report, while strong in some respects, should be taken with a grain of salt. It's important to remember that employment is a lagging indicator. Payroll employment often peaks either at the beginning or middle of recessions, so it provides virtually no warning...
One of the main features of the current recovery is the drop in the potential growth rate. In every other recovery since WW2, real GDP has risen back to potential as the recovery got going, thereby closing the output gap. This time around, the output...
Nonfarm payrolls came in well above expectations at 321K vs expectations of 230K for November. In addition, the previous two months were both upwardly revised by a total 44K jobs. Private nonfarm payrolls were up a very impressive 314K....
Initial claims for unemployment insurance fell to just 264K for the week of October 10th. This is the lowest level since April 14th, 2000. The non-seasonally adjusted series is now down 23% year-over-year. This is a positive sign that the US economy isn’t on the...
While the headline payroll numbers for September were positive, 248k vs 215k expected, and the August payroll number was revised much higher to 180K (from 142k), we are nonetheless very disappointed to see the participation drop to the lowest level since February 1977. The participation...
Good news on the employment front. The July JOLTS data were released this morning and showed the total nonfarm hires level is at its highest level in 80 months (Nov 2007)....
We have another positive release for the US labor markets today as the number of job openings has increased by about 500k jobs in the past two months. According to the JOLTS report released this morning, the current level of 4.635 million jobs is the...
It has been a very quiet week on the US economic report front but today we finally have a string of high profile releases. We will take them in order of release times… Jobless Claims snapped back a sharp 28K jobs to 326k during the...
While initial jobless claims were just a bit higher this week than last (304K vs 302K), the widely watched 4-week moving average slid down to 312K which is its lowest level since October 2007. Continuing claims fell to 6-year low as well....
