2009-02-06 USER


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Karim writes:

Job losses picking up speed and hours worked continue to plunge.

  • -598k job losses in January
  • Benchmark revision for 2008, -400k
  • Unemployment rate up from 7.2% to 7.6%
  • Hours worked down another 0.7% (biggest driver of personal income)
  • Augmented unemployment rate rises from 13.5% to 13.9% (was 8.7% in December 2007)
  • Diffusion index down to 25.3 from 25.5 (only 2 sectors to add jobs were education, 54k, and government, 6k)

Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (Jan)

Survey -540K
Actual -598K
Prior -524K
Revised -577K

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Change in Nonfarm Payrolls YoY (Jan)

Survey n/a
Actual -3500.00
Prior -2589.00
Revised n/a

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Nonfarm Payrolls ALLX (Jan)

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Unemployment Rate (Jan)

Survey 7.5%
Actual 7.6%
Prior 7.2%
Revised n/a

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Unemployment Rate ALLX 1 (Jan)

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Unemployment Rate ALLX 2 (Jan)

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Change in Manufacturing Payrolls (Jan)

Survey -145K
Actual -207K
Prior -149K
Revised -162K

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Change in Manufacturing Payrolls YoY (Jan)

Survey n/a
Actual -7.7%
Prior -5.9%
Revised n/a

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Average Hourly Earnings MoM (Jan)

Survey 0.2%
Actual 0.3%
Prior 0.3%
Revised 0.4%

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Average Hourly Earnings YoY (Jan)

Survey 3.6%
Actual 3.9%
Prior 3.7%
Revised 4.0%

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 1 (Jan)

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 2 (Jan)

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 3 (Jan)

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Average Weekly Hours (Jan)

Survey 33.3
Actual 33.3
Prior 33.3
Revised n/a


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2009-01-09 USER


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Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (Dec)

Survey -525K
Actual -524K
Prior -533K
Revised -584K

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Change in Nonfarm Payrolls YoY (Dec)

Survey n/a
Actual -2589K
Prior -2024K
Revised n/a

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Nonfarm Payrolls ALLX (Dec)

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Unemployment Rate (Dec)

Survey 7.0%
Actual 7.2%
Prior 6.7%
Revised 6.8%

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Unemployment Rate ALLX 1 (Dec)

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Unemployment Rate ALLX 2 (Dec)

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Change in Manufacturing Payrolls (Dec)

Survey -100K
Actual -149K
Prior -85K
Revised -104K

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Change in Manufacturing Payrolls YoY (Dec)

Survey n/a
Actual -5.9%
Prior -4.6%
Revised n/a

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Average Hourly Earnings MoM (Dec)

Survey 0.2%
Actual 0.3%
Prior 0.4%
Revised n/a

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Average Hourly Earnings YoY (Dec)

Survey 3.6%
Actual 3.7%
Prior 3.7%
Revised 3.8%

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 1 (Dec)

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 2 (Dec)

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 3 (Dec)

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Average Weekly Hours (Dec)

Survey 33.5
Actual 33.3
Prior 33.5
Revised n/a

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Wholesale Inventories MoM (Nov)

Survey -0.7%
Actual -0.6%
Prior -1.1%
Revised -1.2%

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Wholesale Inventories YoY (Nov)

Survey n/a
Actual 6.3%
Prior 7.9%
Revised n/a

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Wholesale Inventories ALLX 1 (Nov)

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Wholesale Inventories ALLX 2 (Nov)


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2008-11-07 USER


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Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (Oct)

Survey -200K
Actual -240K
Prior -159K
Revised -284K

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Change in Nonfarm Payrolls YoY (Oct)

Survey n/a
Actual -1078.00
Prior -698.00
Revised n/a

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Nonfarm Payrolls ALLX (Oct)

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Unemployment Rate (Oct)

Survey 6.3%
Actual 6.5%
Prior 6.1%
Revised n/a

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Unemployment Rate ALLX 1 (Oct)

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Unemployment Rate ALLX 2 (Oct)

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Change in Manufacturing Payrolls (Oct)

Survey -65K
Actual -90K
Prior -51K
Revised -56K

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Change in Manufacturing Payrolls YoY (Oct)

Survey n/a
Actual -3.8%
Prior -3.2%
Revised n/a

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Manufacturing Payrolls ALLX (Oct)

 
Karim writes:

Payrolls:

Worse than expected (but that was expected)

  • -240k; unemployment rate rises from 6.1% to 6.5%
  • Net revisions -179k (Sep revised from -159k to -284k)
  • Hours continue to shrink -0.3% m/m and -2.6% annualized over past 3mths
  • Avg hourly earnings 0.2%
  • Avg duration of unemployment jumps from 18.4weeks to 19.7
  • Diffusion index falls from 38.1 to 37.6

By industry:

  • Mfg -90k
  • Construction -49k
  • Retail -38k
  • Finance -24k
  • Temp -34k
  • Education 21k
  • Govt 23k

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Average Hourly Earnings MoM (Oct)

Survey 0.2%
Actual 0.2%
Prior 0.2%
Revised n/a

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Average Hourly Earnings YoY (Oct)

Survey 3.5%
Actual 3.5%
Prior 3.4%
Revised n/a

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 1 (Oct)

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 2 (Oct)

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Average Weekly Hours (Oct)

Survey 33.6
Actual 33.6
Prior 33.6
Revised n/a

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Wholesale Inventories MoM (Sep)

Survey 0.3%
Actual -0.1%
Prior 0.8%
Revised 0.6%

 
Falling?

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Wholesale Inventories YoY (Sep)

Survey n/a
Actual 9.7%
Prior 10.9%
Revised n/a

 
Past the peak?

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Wholesale Inventories ALLX 1 (Sep)

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Wholesale Inventories ALLX 2 (Sep)

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Pending Home Sales (Sep)

Survey n/a
Actual 89.2
Prior 93.5
Revised n/a

 
Still a mini trend higher.

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Pending Home Sales MoM (Sep)

Survey -3.4%
Actual -4.6%
Prior 7.4%
Revised 7.5%

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Pending Home Sales YoY (Sep)

Survey n/a
Actual 7.7%
Prior 5.1%
Revised n/a

 
Not bad! probably lots of foreclosure sales.


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2008-10-03 USER


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Unemployment Rate (Sep)

Survey 6.1%
Actual 6.1%
Prior 6.1%
Revised n/a

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Unemployment Rate ALLX 1 (Sep)

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Unemployment Rate ALLX 2 (Sep)

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Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (Sep)

Survey -105k
Actual -159k
Prior -84k
Revised -73k

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Change in Nonfarm Payrolls YoY (Sep)

Survey n/a
Actual -519.00
Prior -279.00
Revised n/a

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Nonfarm Payrolls ALLX (Sep)

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Change in Manufacturing Payrolls (Sep)

Survey -57k
Actual -51k
Prior -61k
Revised -56k

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Change in Manufacturing Payrolls YoY (Sep)

Survey n/a
Actual -3.2%
Prior -3.0%
Revised n/a

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Manufacturing Payrolls ALLX (Sep)

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Average Hourly Earnings MoM (Sep)

Survey 0.3%
Actual 0.2%
Prior 0.4%
Revised n/a

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Average Hourly Earnings YoY (Sep)

Survey 3.6%
Actual 3.4%
Prior 3.6%
Revised n/a

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 1 (Sep)

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 2 (Sep)

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 3 (Sep)

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Average Weekly Hours (Sep)

Survey 33.7
Actual 33.6
Prior 33.7
Revised n/a

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Average Weekly Hours ALLX 1 (Sep)

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Average Weekly Hours ALLX 2 (Sep)

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ISM Non Manufacturing Composite (Sep)

Survey 50.0
Actual 50.2
Prior 50.6
Revised n/a


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2008-09-05 USER


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US Economic Releases


Unemployment Rate (Aug)

Survey 5.7%
Actual 6.1%
Prior 5.7%
Revised n/a

 
Another big gap up.
Quite a bit of the run up is due to new people entering the labor force to find work.
Could be due to new extended benefits program.
Could be due to more people looking to earn some extra money.

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Unemployment Rate ALLX 1 (Aug)

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Unemployment Rate ALLX 2 (Aug)

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Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (Aug)

Survey -75K
Actual -84K
Prior -51K
Revised -60K

 
A bit worse than expected and previous months revised up some, mainly due to state and local government reductions.

Weakness but still not recession type losses.

Cesar writes:

weak report

  • NFP down 84k; net revisions down another 58k, 8th straight mthly decline

Yes, continuing weakness in employment, but not at 200,000+ recession type levels.

Also, negative revisions for previous months means productivity was even higher.

  • Unemployment rate jumps from 5.682% to 6.055% (household employment down 342k and labor force up 250k)

Yes, big numbers entering the labor force have been contributing to the higher unemployment rate.

Some of this could be due to extended benefit programs and some could be to high pricers driving people out of ‘retirement’ and back into the labor force.

  • Diffusion index improves from 41.4 to 48.9
  • Index of aggregate hours drops 0.1% (3 months annualized rate down 1.8%)
  • Average duration of unemployment rises 17.1 to 17.4 weeks (median actually improved from 9.7 to 9.2)
  • Average hourly earnings rise 0.4% and increased from 3.4% y/y to 3.6% y/y
  • By sector:
    • Mfg down 61k
    • Construction down 8k
    • Retail down 20k
    • Temp down 37k
    • Education & Health care up 55k
    • Govt up 17k

The last two are the largest sectors and where the trend of growth generally comes from.

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Change in Manufacturing Payrolls (Aug)

Survey -35K
Actual -61K
Prior -35K
Revised -38K

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Mining-Manufacturing Employment ALLX (Aug)

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Average Hourly Earnings MoM (Aug)

Survey 0.3%
Actual 0.4%
Prior 0.3%
Revised 0.4%

 
A bit of an uptick, but not problematic at this point.

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Average Hourly Earnings YoY (Aug)

Survey 3.4%
Actual 3.6%
Prior 3.4%
Revised n/a

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 1 (Aug)

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 2 (Aug)

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Average Hourly Earnings ALLX 3 (Aug)

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Average Weekly Hours (Aug)

Survey 33.6
Actual 33.7
Prior 33.6
Revised 33.7

 
Hours per worker up, but total hours worked down due to job losses.

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Average Weekly Hours ALLX 1 (Aug)

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Average Weekly Hours ALLX 2 (Aug)

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Mortgage Delinquencies (2Q)

Survey n/a
Actual 6.41%
Prior 6.35%
Revised n/a

 
Still going up, but possibly the rate of increase has slowed.

Should level off as mortgages granted on fraudulent applications were largely eliminated over a year ago.

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Mortgage Delinquencies ALLX (2Q)


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2008-06-06 Economic Releases


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2008-06-06 Change in Nonfarm Payrolls

Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (May)

Survey -60K
Actual -49K
Prior -20K
Revised -28K

Down 49,000 was better than expected.
Previous months revised down an additional total of 15,000.

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2008-06-06 Unemployment Rate

Unemployment Rate (May)

Survey 5.1%
Actual 5.5%
Prior 5.0%
Revised n/a

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2008-06-06 Unemployment Rate ALLX

Unemployment Rate ALLX

Total employment is over 138 million, and the seasonal adjustment dropped the actual number by over 1.5 million jobs.

So this report is fighting strong seasonal adjustments.

5.5% unemployment from the household survey is a lot worse than expected.

Seems 500,000 new job seekers entered the labor force in that survey, apparently a statistical quirk added that many teenagers and 20-24 year olds out of sync with seasonal adjustments.

Even so, the labor markets remain on the weak side.

But they are strong enough to support crude at $131.72 (as Saudi oil production continues to grow at even these higher prices and headline inflation) is well north of 4%, as the May CPI is expected to show.

Employment is also strong enough to yield positive GDP growth – no recession yet.

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2008-06-06 Change in Manufacturing Payrolls

Change in Manufacturing Payrolls (May)

Survey -40K
Actual -26K
Prior -46K
Revised -49

Better than expected, in line with other recent report.

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2008-06-06 Average Hourly Earnings MoM

Average Hourly Earnings MoM (May)

Survey 0.2%
Actual 0.3%
Prior 0.1%
Revised n/a

A touch higher than expected, but not that bad.

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2008-06-06 Average Hourly Earnings YoY

Average Hourly Earnings YoY (May)

Survey 3.4%
Actual 3.5%
Prior 3.4%
Revised 3.5%

Also a bit higher than expected, but still not moving higher.

‘Wage inflation’ is not the issue, nor is it necessary condition for problematic inflation, especially in an export economy.

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2008-06-06 Average Weekly Hours

Average Weekly Hours (May)

Survey 33.7
Actual 33.7
Prior 33.7
Revised n/a

Holding steady.

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2008-06-06 Wholesale Inventories MoM

Wholesale Inventories MoM (April)

Survey 0.4%
Actual 1.3%
Prior -0.1%
Revised 0.1%

Higher than expected, but not at recession levels yet.

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2008-06-06 Wholesale Inventories YoY

Wholesale Inventories YoY (April)

Survey n/a
Actual 8.1%
Prior 7.0%
Revised n/a

Higher than expected, but still not all that high.

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2008-06-06 Consumer Credit

Consumer Credit (April)

Survey $7.2B
Actual $8.9B
Prior $15.3B
Revised $13.1B

This month a bit better than expected, last month revised down a bit. Consumer credit seems to be chugging along at better than recession levels.


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2008-04-04 US Economic Releases

2008-04-04 Unemployment Rate

Unemployment Rate (Mar)

2008-04-04 Unemployment Rate since 1998

Unemployment Rate since 1998

Survey 5.0%
Actual 5.1%
Prior 4.8%
Revised n/a

From Karim:

Very weak report. Among the high(low)lights:
Unemployment rate rises from 4.8% to 5.1%
NFP -80k; net revisions -67k (Jan and Feb now down -76k in each month)
Household survey shows 434k rise in number of unemployed
Construction -51k; manufacturing -48k;retail -12k; professional and business services -35k; education +42k; government +12k
Index of aggregate hours up 0.2% but down -1.2% annualized in Q1; all but assuring negative Q1 growth
Diffusion index up from 43.6 to 47.6


2008-04-04 Change in Nonfarm Payrolls

Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (Mar)

Survey -50K
Actual -80K
Prior -63K
Revised -76K

2008-04-04 Change in Manufacturing Payrolls

Change in Manufacturing Payrolls (Mar)

Survey -35K
Actual -48K
Prior -52K
Revised -46K

Payrolls lower than expected, previous months revised down some, confirming Q1 GDP somewhere around zero, and a flattish start for Q2 as well.

Not much of a market response, as this kind of weakness is no longer seen to threaten ‘market functioning’.

The perception of tail risk to market functioning is greatly diminished due to market perceptions that the Fed/Tsy is standing by to ‘write the check’ and that the checks won’t bounce.

Yes, they can be inflationary, and make the USD go down, but govt checks will clear and nominal demand can be sustained as desired.

The balance of risks are slowly returning to the more traditional/mainstream inflation vs growth and the appropriate interest rate policy to sustain the output gap necessary for price stability.

New data points for the Fed:

flat growth at best,

5.1% unemployment,

and yet demand is high enough to keep crude over $105, food prices skyrocketing, inflation at 4%, and the dollar falling like a stone and driving other import prices up.

And for as long as they can remember their forecasting models for prices have been unreliable at best.

Weaker growth with higher inflation likely tips their models to requiring a higher output gap (higher unemployment) to bring inflation down over their two year horizon.


2008-04-04 Average Hourly Earnings MoM

Average Hourly Earnings MoM (Mar)

Survey 0.3%
Actual 0.3%
Prior 0.3%
Revised n/a

2008-04-04 Average Hourly Earnings YoY

Average Hourly Earnings YoY (Mar)

Survey 3.6%
Actual 3.6%
Prior 3.7%
Revised n/a

2008-04-04 Average Weekly Hours

Average Weekly Hours (Mar)

Survey 33.7
Actual 33.8
Prior 33.7
Revised n/a

Never actually goes down.

2008-01-04 US Economic Releases

2008-01-04 Unemployment Rate

Unemployment Rate (Dec)

Survey 4.8%
Actual 5.0%
Prior 4.7%
Revised n/a

It comes from the household survey – been volatile.


2008-01-04 Change in Nonfarm Payrolls

Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (Dec)

Survey 70K
Actual 18K
Prior 94K
Revised 115K

2008-01-04 Change in Manufacturing Payrolls

Change in Manufacturing Payrolls (Dec)

Survey -15K
Actual -31K
Prior -11K
Revised -13K

Payroll increases continue to decline modestly over time. The fed believes demographic changes will reduce the labor force participation rate, keeping unemployment relatively low and labor markets tight, even with fewer jobs.


2008-01-04 Average Hourly Earnings MoM

Average Hourly Earnings MoM

Survey 0.3%
Actual 0.4%
Prior 0.5%
Revised 0.4%

2008-01-04 Average Hourly Earnings YoY

Average Hourly Earnings YoY (Dec)

Survey 3.6%
Actual 3.7%
Prior 3.8%
Revised n/a

Remains firm, and productivity probably down, meaning unit labor costs rising some.


2008-01-04 Average Weekly Hours

Average Weekly Hours (Dec)

Survey 33.8
Actual 33.8
Prior 33.8
Revised n/a

2008-01-04 ISM Non-Manufacturing

ISM Non-Manufacturing (Dec)

Survey 53.6
Actual 53.9
Prior 54.1
Revised

Very firm and cross checks with th 93,000 increase in service sector jobs for December.

ISM Non-Manufacturing TABLE ISM Non-Manufacturing TABLE

ISM Non-Manufacturing TABLE

Note the strength in the price categories.


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