559,000 Jobs.
That's what we added in the merry month of May and it's a bit less than the 675,000 expected but still some pretty healthy growth so we can expect the market to react well since it's not a good enough number to get the Fed to tighten but it's not a bad enough number to indicate the economy is stalling, a very Goldilocks way to end the month.
Unfortunately, we still have 10M jobs to fill so filling them at a rate of 559,000/month (with a population growing at 150,000/month) means it will take us about 2 years to really get the economy back to normal. Overall, we are -7.6M jobs since Jan, 2019 and we should have added 2.6M new jobs during that time. Meanwhile, it should be noted that Hourly Earnings rose 0.5%, hotter than 0.2% expected by people who obviously aren't paying attention but nowhere near enough to keep up with inflation so real income is still woefully shy of where it was in 2019 – yet people continue to over-bet on the economic recovery.
Nearly half of small-business owners surveyed by the National Federation of Independent Business in May said they were struggling to fill slots. Many employers have blamed enhanced pandemic-related unemployment benefits for the shortage of workers, which has prompted 25 Republican-led states withdraw from some or all of the federal jobless assistance programs in the coming weeks, months ahead of their expiration. Most economists have pushed back against this argument and say the reality is more complicated. A lack of child care, continuing health concerns, low wages and competing priorities all probably play a larger role, they say.
With all the heaving and hoing the market has done this week, we haven't actually gone anywhere – even with this morning's pop. We're clearly consolidating at S&P 4,200 but whether it's for a move up or down remains to be seen. Oil (/CL) is popping to $69.50 into the weekend and we are going to short into the weekend. We started shorting (again) at $68.50, so another round here will give us an average of $69 and then we take 1/2 off when we get back to $69 and we're left with our original short at a higher strike over the weekend – so that's the plan.
Not much else going on into the weekend – I just read through the news and nothing noteworth and I kind of like AVGO but it's too expensive and I was looking at the airlines but still too scary (and no longer cheap) so not a lot of trade ideas at the moment either. No sense in forcing anything -we'll just relax and see what turns up next week.
Have a great weekend,
– Phil
