Submitted by Mark Hanna
Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.
February’s job growth numbers came in more or less in line with expectations at 227,000 and an 8.3% rate. Private sector gains of 233,000 vs a 6,000 loss in government. January was revised up nicely to 284,000 vs 243,000. Full report here.
Average hourly earnings +0.1%, a bit light versus expectations of 0.2% – but one could say that is good news for those who want more monetary easing. This figure is up 1.9% year over year so no cost push inflation coming from this avenue which would be one thing the Fed might actually consider if it ramped up.
Average workweek unchanged at 34.5 hours.
U-6 (marginally attached + unemployed) down to 14.9%
Labor force participation rate: 63.9% up 0.2%!!!! <—-biggest increase in roughly 2 years. This is part of the reason the unemployment rate did not fall. Still way below a typical rate at roughly 66% but the first increase in a long time.
Long term unemployed remains around 5.4M; 42.6% of the unemployed.
All in all good data – go forward market wise we have to see how much is built into the market and in a few months we’ll see if some of the growth was a function of the warm weather affecting the normal seasonality in these numbers. (i.e. the BLS adjusts for typical slowdowns in areas such as construction due to winter weather but when you have a very warm winter, you don’t have as much of a slowdown as the government data would adjust for) If you continue to see 200K type of growth April-June, then ECRI is going to have a very difficult ‘recession’ case.
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