Jobs Report: Early Analyst Responses

Here are a few initial thoughts on Friday’s release of U.S. payrolls numbers for September – a disaster, with 263,000 jobs gone, versus expectations for a loss of 175,000 jobs.

Sal Guatieri, economist, BMO Nesbitt Burns: “Though the underlying trend in job losses is slowing, the September report almost cements the jobless-recovery view.”

Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist, High Frequency Economics: “The details are not quite as bad as the headline because the government component fell a hefty 53,000, so private payrolls were down 210,000, not statistically different from August’s -182,000 but better than previous months. The improving trend continues....”

Millan Mulraine, economics strategist, TD Securities: “Notwithstanding the abysmal performance of the labour market in September, we continue to believe that the U.S. economic recession is behind us, even though its impact is continuing to be felt in a very big way in the labour market. If anything, we think that this report will dampen expectations for the near-term recovery, which we believe will be tepid at best. All in all, with the labour market remaining a lagging indicator on economic activity, we believe that this report will have emphasized the Fed’s judgement to keep policy easy for an extended period.”

Comments

[notsosmart:]

with 6 job seekers for every 1 job something is very amiss with this "green shoot business".some folks will never work again.no work,little or no spending.be wary of the ponzi/casino wall st.pushing phony paper around or playing the market like a casino game wont right this sinking ship.until we get back to making quality goods @ a fair price & teaching the american dumb-dumbs to support our own there will be a very slow,if any,recovery.

Oct 02 11:14 AM

[Tony Petroski:]

"Millan Mulraine, economics strategist, TD Securities: 'Notwithstanding the abysmal performance of the labour market in September, we continue to believe that the U.S. economic recession is behind us, even though its impact is continuing to be felt in a very big way in the labour market. If anything, we think that this report will dampen expectations for the near-term recovery,'"

Even our commentators have been outsourced. American folk use labor, not labour.

Oct 02 11:21 AM

[MikeX:]

Folks it is a deflationary crash. A bubble that was inflated for 50 years does not go away with a small crash in few months. The credit bubble is deflating. It is still very high compared to GDP. Great Depression happened when the bubble was much much smaller. This time it is big. When it deflates, it will suck the money out of the economy. With no money to earn, companies will go bust. At the current PE levels, these companies are over priced. They need to double their earnings right away. Do you see anyone doubling earnings?

www.tradingstocks.net/...

This bubble is like the South Sea Bubble. Companies are not paying dividend. The bank pays more interest. Why should the price of anything that does not pay a dime go up? Greedy people think they are going to make it in price appreciation. All they think is that the stock will go up and they will sell it to the next sucker who will buy at the top. This is not a win-win scenario. The only recovery is in stock traders mind. They are chasing the price. This is a traders game now. A casino. Everybody in the stock market wants to rob someone else's money. It did not have to be that way. Ideally you should own a business for the income it generates and you could hold it for a long time. But no, in this casino, everybody thinks they are smart, and the guy who buys at the top is the sucker. Nobody cares about him. Do these investors really think they are the smart ones? When DOW hits 1000, most will be humbled. Everybody is in love with the stocks. At the bottom, everybody will hate them. Stocks won't be in the news. Until then, these companies will continue to layoff people to to survive, to keep their stock high. But when stocks are at a bubble like this:

www.tradingstocks.net/...

You can imagine what will happen to jobs when the bubble deflates! Expect MUCH worse numbers in the future.

Oct 02 11:38 AM

[AndrewBaker:]

Talk can twist the facts in such a way that you believe it's getting better when it's not: but talk alone cannot hide the loss of jobs. Behind-the-scenes manipulation of the figures to make them look better than they are is more likely, so it's very easy to decide on what these numbers really mean. There is little or no upside in them, and a lot of downside, potential and real.

Do not loosen your belts yet, we've still a long way to go ...

Oct 02 11:44 AM

[robert.b.fe...:]

All of the uncertainty feeds volatility. While much of the market remains over valued and it would appear that the downside has room there are good stocks at fair prices available. While I am hunkered down for the moment awaiting the next shoe to drop and building cash reserves, short term traders can score from all of this. The next pull back could present an entirely different investment picture than the recent collapse. In fact I would expect a very different profile. Stay alert keep your traveling stops tight and your stash of cash in gold, having some dry powder on hand helps.

Oct 02 12:20 PM

[ETFdesk.com:]

Revisions to previous months came in at -400K, that is horrendous! Estimates were in the -150 to -200K range. Total job loss goes up from 7.6 million to 8 million. There goes there arguement that employment is less bad.

see article: Early Job Cuts Worse Than First Thought, as More Companies Go Belly Up www.etfdesk.com/headli...

Oct 02 12:25 PM

[dulac74:]

Since when is a government job (lost) not a government job (lost)?

Oct 02 01:57 PM

[manya05:]

We are arguing semantics here. Whatever GDP numbers the government is measuring, they obviously do not mean much when large swaths of the US population are unemployed, and the rest are hanging on to dear life. I have no idea what these statisticians are measuring, but it has no meaning. Recovery my foot!

Oct 02 03:23 PM

[frosty:]

"About 824,000 more jobs may be subtracted from the payroll count for the 12 months through last March when the figures are officially revised early next year, a Labor Department report showed today."

Also, "“We are probably still underestimating job losses,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. “There could be another 30,000 to 40,000” that the data isn’t picking up."

Both from a Bloomberg article found at bloomberg.com/apps...

Try to find good news in the bad and others find even worse news in the bad. The labor department model for job losses has likely led to a serious understatement of the unemployment figures for the last year and a half.

Oct 02 03:25 PM

[Russ Wetherill:]

Here is what I've learned from the BLS data: whatever they report, the reality is almost certainly twice as bad.

For example, this month the BLS announced that the unemployment rate went from 9.7 to 9.8 percent. A modest increase, but not too bad. What they failed to mention is that the household data in Table A of their report shows that the civilian labor force decreased by 571,000. Also, the number of people employed decreased by 785,000 people, from August to September. The number of people not in the labor force also increased by 807,000 people.

However you slice it, there are 785,000 fewer people in the employed this month than there were last month. For whatever reason, there are 785,000 fewer paychecks that went out in September than in August.

Oct 02 05:03 PM

[Stone Fox C...:]

Productivity up. Job costs down. Corporate profits up.

Did everybody really think that after the Great Recession corporations would just start hiring willy nilly? The trend is still down as this could easily be a quarter end cut just like in June. Likely to see another big drop in Oct and Nov.

Oct 03 12:54 AM

[genghis khan:]

Tony said, "..Even our commentators have been outsourced. American folk use labor, not labour."

Well of course.. why would you employ a barely literate college graduate product of the rotten socialist unionized public education system that has sunk to new lows versus other developed or aspiring nations who value their educational systems???

Oct 03 03:11 AM

[Mad Hedge F...:]

fio For the last six months there has been a great big whopping contradiction in the markets. The stock market has been discounting a return to the “Roaring Twenties,” while the bond market has been anticipating the return of the “Great Depression.” After yesterday’s publication of the Labor Dept.’s September nonfarm payroll number showing the loss of another 263,000 jobs, it looks like the bond market now has the upper hand. The really disturbing aspect of this number is that 57,000 teachers were fired, as states chop budgets to the bone. This is really eating our seed corn by the handfull. Stocks have dropped 5% from last week’s peak, as the bond market soared, the ten year yield reaching nosebleed territory of 3.05%. My call to buy the TBT, a leveraged bet that US Treasury bonds would fall, is starting to look a little green about the gills. The dollar still maintains its flight to safety status, which to me, is one of the great ironies of all time. It’s like that reprobate, alcoholic uncle with the bad teeth, who, when your car breaks down in the middle of a downpour in a bad neighborhood, will always let you crash on his sofa. Let’s call him your Uncle Sam. You have to hand it to PIMCO’s inveterate card counter, Bill Gross, who says this is all about transitioning to a “new” normal of 1%-2% real GDP growth. That’s why he was loading the boat with bond yields at 4%, a ballsey move at the time, which now smells like roses. I guess that’s why they call him the “Bond King.” As for me, I’m never wrong, just early. Sometimes way early.

Oct 03 12:49 PM

[David Van K...:]

"Companies are not paying dividend. The bank pays more interest."
-----
That is not only an illiterate statement, it is just plain wrong. There are scores of companies paying dividends of 3%+ that under any form of analysis are safe and reliable. Scores of companies have raised their dividends this year, from token 1% increases to over 15% year-over-year. Many companies have been paying dividends, and increasing them yearly, for 50 years and more. Try basing your opinion on facts rather than the other way around. Check out the Dividend Aristocrats list at S&P, or the Dividend Achievers list at Drip Investing. Or read the many articles on this site by authors such as Dividend Growth Investor, Dividends4Life, or myself.

Oct 03 02:27 PM

[Albertarocks:]

>Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist, High Frequency Economics: “The details are not quite as bad as the headline because the government component fell a hefty 53,000, so private payrolls were down 210,000, not statistically different from August’s -182,000 but better than previous months. The improving trend continues....”<

Let me get this straight. In the private sector, the Sept. job losses were 15% worse than the job losses in August and Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist, says this is "not statistically different... the improving continues".

Sure, I can understand that the chief U.S. economist should sound positive, but folks, this statement is on the verge of being an outright lie. At the very least, it's ridiculous and simply does not convey anything resembling the facts.

According to his bio, "A persistent critic of the Fed, Dr. Shepherdson was one of the first economists to warn that an implosion of the housing market would lead the U.S. economy into recession."

This goofball is paid with your hard earned tax dollars. Does anybody know why he has that job, or who put him into that position? How much do you want to bet he came out of the banking sector? Wait, let me gooble that....

Yup! Just as I thought. He's a Briton who was formerly Chief Economist, USA, for HSBC Securities, Inc. in New York. I'm starting to get the picture. If he's a FED basher, it's a ruse. It's becoming so clear, almost "in your face" blatant, that the financial industry is so infiltrated with minions that it's absolutely rotten to the core.

And to further the evidence... >Millan Mulraine, economics strategist, TD Securities: “Notwithstanding the abysmal performance of the labour market in September, we continue to believe that the U.S. economic recession is behind us.<

Is that not the same as your doctor saying "You have cancer, but don't worry about it because your hair looks nice"?

All the more reason to throw support behind Ron Paul. He's striking directly at the heart of the beast, and if he's successful, all we then have to worry about is the IMF, which is the head of that same beast. A "one world currency"? That would mark the beginning of the end of us all.

As for the title of this article "Early Analyst Responses"... who cares?

Oct 04 01:48 PM