Friday, September 4, 2015

Fridays without perspective aka US Non-Farm Payrolls

US NFP printed 173K (seasonality adjusted!) for the month of August and the labour wage growth was 0.3% m-o-m, unemployment rate was 5.1%. 

Reactions:
September hike on table based on Un-employment rate  Vs.  No point in yelling for it due to low headline NFP no.

Perspective: 
Long-term NFP is  trending near 200K per month over past 6 months, monthly miss of 40 K doesn't even register, according to BLS:"An over-the-month employment change of about 100,000 is statistically significant in the establishment survey"....Oh, so the miss/beat of 50 K that the market cries about ? Well.. and this number itself is seasonality adjusted, oh great..., now where have we seen this before? Hmm.

The unemployment rate: Derived out of survey of households, moves in opposite direction of participation rate and even less reliable. 

Labor data over 3-4 month may be a good way to judge direction of economy but a single reading available each month doesn't affect anyone except intra-day positions on the data release day.

Frankly, we are not any wiser after yesterday's data, and as many "pundits" have pointed out, one hike of 12.5 or 25 bp should n't keep anyone awake but that's for another day.


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