The lack of jobs growth continues to weigh on Joe Sixpack's world. The preliminary January 2010 data from BLS's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) show that the rate of YoY hiring declines are continuing at a ever slowing rate.
Although one month does not make a trend, job openings for January 2010 remained unchanged ending 2.5 years of decline.
What is allowing me to spin this JOLTS data positively is the real-time February 2010 diesel fuel consumption data from over the road trucking tracked by Ceridian Corp. Their press release interpreted the data negatively:
Results from the Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index™ (PCI) by UCLA Anderson School of Management show the U.S. economy essentially flat over the first two months of the year, with a February decline offsetting the modest gains previously reported for January. With the index number this month enhanced to include adjustments for monthly workdays as well as seasonality, February fell 0.7 percent, following January’s increase of 0.6 percent. This flat performance follows a robust 2.8 percent gain in December.
The decline in February’s PCI prompts a lowering of expectations for the Federal Reserve’s forthcoming Industrial Production report. Based on data through January, a forecast for February’s monthly growth of Industrial Production to be released on March 15 would have been 1.0 percent. With the new February PCI data now available, that Industrial Production forecast drops to 0.6 percent.
I guess the analysts at UCLA have their own way of looking at the data. Using their unadjusted data, the picture seems different.
We now have three months of increase YoY in diesel consumption. We are moving more physical items meaning the economy is expanding from the depths of hell. There should be no illusion that good days are here again as usage remains in the toilet. But YoY improvement is better than less bad, and a hell of a lot better than worse.
What is obvious is that the economy is soaking up the spare capacity – although not growing enough yet to deliver a real expansion for Joe Sixpack.
Disclosure: None
