After surprising top the upside in August, Housing Starts and Building Permits disappointed in September, declining more than expected (-0.5% MoM and -2.9% MoM respectively)…
Source: Bloomberg
Under the hood, multi-family permits plunged 10.8% MoM (and multi-family starts dropped for the second straight month). Single-family starts rose 2.7% MoM and permiots inchjed higher by 0.3% MoM…
Source: Bloomberg
Rate-cut expectations appear to have taken the excitement out of the building market…
Source: Bloomberg
Housing Completions also dropped (but the BLS thinks construction jobs continue to rise non-stop)…
Source: Bloomberg
So, The Fed cuts short-term rates… mortgage-rates rise… and builders slow their building plans… that’s not how it’s supposed to work!
Communications breakdown! As Harris wordsalads her vision of the economy saying small businesses are the backbone of the US economy, but small businesses aren’t feeling it.
Small business optimism remains below 100 at 91.5.
Mortgage rates are rising again with Friday’s surprising jobs report. But as it just a false election report. If Rasmussen is correct, mortgage rates should FALL again.
It turns out that Powell’s “emergency” 50bps rate cut was – drumroll – another major policy mistake by the Fed. Or it is Presidential election interference by The Biden/Harris Administration giving Cacklin’ Kamala as talking point?
Moments ago, the BLS reported that at a time when prevailing consensus was for jobs to continue their recent downward slide sparked by the near-record annual jobs revision and several months of downbeat jobs reports, in September the US unexpectedly added a whopping 254K jobs, the biggest monthly increase since March…
There’s more: unlike previous months where we saw repeat downward job revisions, the BLS said that both prior months were revised up, to wit: the change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised up by 55,000, from +89,000 to +144,000, and the change for August was revised up by 17,000, from +142,000 to +159,000. With these revisions, employment in July and August combined is 72,000 higher than previously reported.
Some context: as UBS notes, the moving six-month average on nonfarm payrolls is 167k. The estimate is that 150k is about consistent with a return of the economy to trend growth. Which means that inflation is about to come back with a vengeance, just as the Fed launches its easing cycle.
Remarkably, while payrolls jumped by the most in half a year, the number of employed people also surged, rising by a whopping 430K, also the biggest one-month jump since March.
It wasn’t just the payrolls, however, which came in far stronger than estimates: the unemployment rate also came in stronger than expected, and thanks to the jump in employed workers coupled with the decline in unemployed workers (from 7.115MM to 6.834MM), it dropped from 4.2% to 4.1% (and down from 4.3% two months ago which spared the entire recession panic).
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult men (3.7 percent) decreased in September. The jobless rates for adult women (3.6 percent), teenagers (14.3 percent), Whites (3.6 percent), Blacks (5.7 percent), Asians (4.1 percent), and Hispanics (5.1 percent) showed little or no change over the month.
And here is the rub, because in a vacuum the super strong jobs numbers would have been fantastic, the only issue is that the September blowout comes as the Fed launches an easing cycle and as wages are once again rising as we have warned for the past 3 months. Indeed, in September, the average hourly earnings rose 0.4% sequentially, beating the estimate of 0.3%, while on an annual basis, wage growth was 4.0%, up from an upward revised 3.9% and beating the 3.8% estimate.
One note here: the average workweek for all employees edged down by 0.1 hour to 34.2 hours in September, which means the hourly earnings increase is not “pure” but rather a function of denominator adjustments. In manufacturing, the average workweek was unchanged at 40.0 hours, and overtime edged down by 0.1 hour to 2.9 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls remained at 33.7 hours.
What sector had the biggest growth? UNPRODUCTIVE government workers! A record 785,000 government workers were added in September, pushing total govt workers also to a new record high.
The Biden/Harris Administration has given away billions of dollars to foreign nations (like Ukraine) and illegal immigrants so far this year,
– $24,400,000,000 to Ukraine.
– $11,300,000,000 to Israel.
– $1,950,000,000 to Ethiopia.
– $1,600,000,000 to Jordan.
– $1,400,000,000 to Egypt.
– $1,100,000,000 to Afghanistan.
– $1,100,000,000 to Somalia.
– $1,000,000,000 to Yemen.
– $987,000,000 to Congo.
– $896,000,000 to Syria.
– $9,000 per illegal immigrant that has entered the U.S.
And claim that FEMA has no money left for Hurricane Helene victims who have received only $750 per person. So I have plenty of reasons to have no trust or confidence in the Biden/Harris Mal-administration.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have produced a destructive proposal to solve the inflation problem: price controls. Her biggest supporters like Elizabeth Warren and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown love the idea of meddling in the private sector,
But I would be symapatheic to their arguement if consumer prices soared more than producer prices. However, the truth is that prices paid by producers (PPI) SOARED far more than prices paid by consumers (CPI).
The cause? Federal goverment spending (green line) exploded with Covid. Harris/Walz are proposing massive spending under her administration hence there will be MORE inflation under Harris/Walz. So, the have to rely on flawed gimmics like price controls. Which will lead to shortage, food lines, rastioning, etc.
Market participants are expecting a 50 BPS cut tomorrow. From 5.50% to 4.913%.
This painting represents Washington DC where the deep state lingers in darkness.
Since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs.
Ay ay ay ay, ay ay ay ay!
The last three monthly jobs reports show aggregate job gains of 340K. Of that total 172K are accounted for by Health Care and Social Assistance and 60K by Government. Manufacturing jobs have shrunk by 34K; Professional and Business services, a 16k decline.
Biden/Harris have alliowed the US to be invaded. Under Harris, the new US national anthem will be Jesusita en Chihuahua.
2023 and early 2024 saw numerous months where BLS reported jobs added increasing by 200k or more. but after May 2024, jobs added have been slowing,
In August 2024, US nonfarm payrolls rose by 142K, with job gains in construction and healthcare. The unemployment rate held at 4.2%, and the labor force participation rate remained steady at 62.7%. Average hourly earnings increased by 0.4% to $35.21.
2,358 jobs were added in August. This is considerably below the average jobs added since April 2021 of 5,254 jobs added monthly.
Both previous months were revised sharply lower, so once again expect the August print to suffer the same fate. Specifically, the BLS said that the payroll print for June was revised down by 61,000, from +179,000 to +118,000, and the change for July was revised down by 25,000, from +114,000 to +89,000. With these revisions, employment in June and July combined is 86,000 lower than previously reported It also means that 4 consecutive job prints have been revised lower, and 6 of the past 7.
Weekly hours worked remains below pre-pandemic average; a fraction of an hour per week may not sound like much, but multiply that by over 150 million people and 52 weeks per year, and that’s a significant difference in man-hours worked and aggregate income.
The more truthful ADP report is out and it shows a wimpy 1.3% YoY addition in jobs. So much for a dynamic, growing economy under Biden/Harris. The Covid era Federal spending has run out of steam.
Against expectations of adding 145k jobs (a slight improvement over July’s 122k), ADP’s Employment report printed a dismal +99k for August – the weakest print since January 2021 (and July’s +122k was revised down to +111k)…
Source: Bloomberg
That is also the fifth straight monthly decline in the ADP employment report’s jobs additions.
The highest-paying jobs segments including Manufacturing and Professional Services saw the largest job declines…
This was the weakest Services job growth since March 2023 as Manufacturing job growth also slowed…
“The job market’s downward drift brought us to slower-than-normal hiring after two years of outsized growth,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist, ADP.
“The next indicator to watch is wage growth, which is stabilizing after a dramatic post-pandemic slowdown.”
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, as a reminder, ADP has underestimated the official BLS data for 10 of the last 12 months…
Source: Bloomberg
So jobs growth weak (great news for the doves) but wage growth has stopped is disinflatinary trend (not a great picture).
US 2y yields plunge to 3.95% as Fed’s Powell says ‘time has come’ to cut interest rates. Says Fed doesn’t seek, welcome further cooling in labor market.
Of course, there is a Presidential election in 60 days and The Fed doesn’t want the Orange Man to win. Instead, they want the Green Gal to win (Kamala Harris). Here is Green Gal (Harris) with Green Porker (Walz).
First, market participants are pricing in nearly 250 basis points (or 2.5%) in rate cuts by Jan 2026. Down to 3% from the cuurent rate of 5.50.
Why? The economy is a shambles due to bad economic policies by Harris/Biden and their Congressional stooges, especially Schumer in the Senate and Pelosi in the House. Hence, The Fed will feel pressure to lower rates. Although I don’t think that it will happen.
Of course, the Philly Fed disclosed that the Biden/Harris administration overstated jobs added by almost 1 million jobs in Q2. I would love to see Harris interviewed about that and watch her deflect and break into gales of laughter. How do American workers feel about Biden/Harris overstating jobs gains by almost 1 million jobs?? Isn’t that fraud?
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