There’s really no way to sugar coat today’s unemployment figures. This is starting to smell like 2009.
Being short the market is one thing, and this sucky number certainly augments my trades, but what a huge miss. Hasn’t been one like this for a while.
The Labor Force has been selected. The rest of us are vagabonds.
One payroll report doesn’t mean much of anything. The total number of payrolls is huge and the change is almost always within the margin of error. On a 3m/3m annualized basis, payrolls rose 1.7%, which is comparable to expansion periods from the past ten years. It is also significantly better than 2009 when payrolls were declining in every month. Now if payrolls continue to remain weak, then perhaps we have a meaningful change in trend. But until then, all I see is hyperbole.
I’m a bit concerned that the labor force participation is at the lowest level in 4 years. Agree that a one time monthly number doesn’t say much. However, this decline in labor force participation looks like a sustained trend to me. It makes me question the payrolls increase - are more people actually getting hired as a % of population, or is this just due to population increase and the same people getting more than one job?
They state that the employment as % of population has not changed. I figure, some Upperwestside couple squeezes out a few kids, and then some nanny gets on the payroll type of thing is going on.
labor force participation includes retirees. I checked with someone at LBS.
so would have to see the retiree rate over last 4 years to know exactly how bad it is.
Well, for next month’s NFP… Subtract one from the labor force, because I’ve officially given up looking for work until after the exam.
Utterly sick of horrible networking and online resume black holes. Reaching nauseous phase. I’m going to focus 100% on studying now.
Normally I don’t get caught up with one bad report, but I noticed today in the Canada monthly jobs report that Canada lost nearly 60k full time private sector jobs and unemployment rose. Apparently jobless Canadians don’t give up like US. Canadian exports to the US were also down.
The big miss on both sides of the border makes it more concerning…
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/04/05/tsx-down-unemployment-trade_n_3019604.html?utm_hp_ref=canada
It seems like a lot of people are still in denial. The West is declining. It will be a slow death, not a sudden collapsing empire. Our living standards will gradualy deteriorate while the rest of the world gets closer to ours.
perfect competition on a global scale? FML
Doesn’t and won’t exist completely. Upper middle class white guys, hot skirts, indian quant dudes, they all have their place in the finance world and won’t necessarily be unseated by cheap labor from abroad. Competitive advantage b*tches. Find yours!
The West is a big place.
Europe is drooping - I mean, declining. Americas (N and S) are still rising. It will be a while before our vigorous Mexican friends slow down.