Submitted by Mark Hanna
Courtesy of MarketMontage. View original post here.
The past month we have seen a lot of weeks (weekly claims) affected by the lack of auto plant shutdowns that normally happens in July, but did not occur this year. I do not know how much of that is in the monthly data (if any) released today. EDIT 8:48 AM – reading the lack of auto layoffs added 13K jobs, so while it had some impact it doesn’t explain the whole upside surprise. Job gains are reported as 163,000 far in advance of expectations nearer to 100,000. But the unemployment rate increased by 0.1% to 8.3%.
Labor force participation rate again fell by 0.1% to 63.7% vs 63.8%. Which makes the unemployment rate increasing strange – usually it is the opposite: the unemployment rate is held down by people leaving the workforce. Perhaps many more people have begun attempting to find a job as their benefits run out.
Average workweek flat at 34.5.
Futures were screaming higher well in advance of this number as Spanish 2 year yields fell overnight. The data should not hurt the case for QE either as the unemployment rate ticked higher…
As for the market, it remains in completely bipolar mode. Today will be the third gap up in 6 sessions. In between those days have been a bunch of selling. It’s an everything up or everything down market.
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