NFP Day
Today will be quite the interesting Non-Farm Payrolls report. Consensus is for 127,000 new jobs, with a range of 60,000 to 160,000.
Why "interesting?"
Well, first, there is a general economic gloominess amongst the populace, as reported in yesterday's WSJ/NBC poll. There is "broad public pessimism," and while at least some of it is related to Iraq, that hardly explains the deep and broad negativity. (I disagree with NRO's Jerry Bowers, who claims its a market sentiment buying signal). Two thirds of Americans beleive we are in a recession right now, or will be within a year. It is simply hard to imagine robust job creation occurring with that sort of widespread sentiment.
Second, there was the rather sour ADP Report (chart). A month-over-month gain of 48,000 new private sector jobs is fairly punk. Unless the government itself created 100k new jobs -- suspect tho that might be -- we are set up for a disappointment.
Lastly, there is the Birth/Death factor. January and July are the two months of the year where BLS puts this hypothetical job creation machine into stasis for a month due to seasonal factors. We typical see a negative or flat B/D number in January and July.
Why does this matter? As we noted in The Accelerating BLS Birth/Death Adjustment, this adjustment has been an increasingly large proportion of BLS reported NFP. In 2006, it was responsible for a large minority of BLS reported new jobs. In 2007, the B/D adjustment is responsible for more than half of all new reported jobs!
The report is out in ten minutes . . .
UPDATE August 3, 2007 8:58am
Nonfarm payrolls increased 92,000 in July (down from 126k in June). The unemployment rate rose 0.1 percentage point to 4.6%. Prior months were revised down by 8k. Monthly job growth has averaged 136,000 so far this year. Employment is now growing at a slower rate than population growth.
The birth/death model added just 26k, way below recent averages.
The WSJ reported that "Stocks may slide early Friday after a weaker-than-expected July employment report, raising fears that troubles in the housing market may be spreading."
>
Sources:
America's Economic Mood: Gloomy
JOHN HARWOOD
WSJ, August 2, 2007; Page A4
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118600572789185278.html
ADP Report
Wednesday, August 1, 2007, 8:15 am EDT http://www.adpemploymentreport.com/report_analysis.aspx
Friday, August 03, 2007 | 07:39 AM | Permalink
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» A Closer Look at July NFP (or, true UR = 5.4%) from The Big Picture
Officer Barbrady, I call shenanigans! Friday's Non-farm payroll passed with very little commentary, as many have been otherwise distracted with the credit meltdown and increased market volatility. As I explained early Friday morn, I expected a punk emp... [Read More]
Tracked on Aug 6, 2007 7:31:34 AM
Comments
The y-t-d avg gain in payrolls is 145k vs 189k in '06. The unemployment rate is expected to remain unch at 4.5% with average hourly earnings expected to rise .3%.
This is obviously a pre credit market selloff # so it should not be taken as an indicator of growth for the next few months BUT it will at least give us a snapshot of the state of the US economy before it enters even more uncertain waters.
Global contagion of the credit turmoil has impacted Germany's 3rd largest mutual fund which stopped redemptions after losses. UK house foreclosures reported for the 1st half of '07 is at the highest since 1999.
Posted by: Peter | Aug 3, 2007 8:27:41 AM
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