September Jobs Report Even Weaker Than It Appears – Ep. 201

* This morning the government released the most important, the most highly-anticipated economic release of the month
* At least that's what everybody who trades in just about any market believes
* And that is the Non-Farm Payroll Report; the official scorecard on job creation and unemployment
* This time it was for the month of September, the final month of Q3
* We're still waiting for the GDP estimate for Q3
* By the way the Atlanta Fed, which continues to do the interest rate limbo, lowered the bar again today on the Q3 GDP, which was 3.8% a month ago, when Janet Yellen talked about how the case for a rate hike had been strengthening
* As of today, the Atlanta Fed is down to 2.1%
* Politically, they are still trying to keep the estimate above 2%, although by the data, I expect it to be south of 2%
* The important news today was the jobs number;
* People were looking for a strong report, I think the consensus was around 170,000, but most people were talking 190 - 200,000, some people were looking for a number north of 200,000
* We got 156,000 jobs, which was below expectations, but a little better than the prior month
* Originally reported at 151,000 but was revised up to 167,000
* So now, based on the revised number, it's actually worse than the prior month
* Even though they revised the prior month up, they revised the month prior to that down, so the net effect of the revision was a decline
* The unemployment rate, expected to hold steady at 4.9 actually ticked back up to 5%
* Average hourly earnings, expected to rise by .3, following a small increase of .1 the prior month came in at .2
* Not quite the gain everybody thought
* This is not a good report, and anybody who thought the Fed was going to hike rates in November, they clearly don't think it anymore
* In fact, even WSJ reporter Jon Hilsenrath said that today's jobs report took a November interest rate hike off the table
* I would suggest that a November rate hike was never on the table
* To the extent it was there, it was only in the imaginations of people like Hilsenrath
* Hilsenrath says now, if the Fed is going to move, it won't be until December, but it's not a sure thing
* The fact is, the Fed is more likely not to raise rates in December
* Once again, you need to know the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say, when it comes to the jobs numbers
* Because the headline doesn't really tell the story
* You always have to look beneath the surface, which nobody wants to do, except for myself, and a few guys over at Zero Hedge
* They always do a good job of pointing out what's really going on in the jobs market
* Number one: The big news was the net creation of part-time-jobs
* I've been saying this for a long time that the big story is that we are replacing full-time jobs with part-time jobs
* Employers need more part-time workers than full-time workers because each one works fewer hours
* We're always going to have net job creation when you are transforming the economy from full-time to part-time employment
* That was clearly the case this last month
* According to the Household Survey, we lost 5,000 full-time jobs in September and added 430,000 part-time jobs
* I would venture to guess that pretty much all of the net increase from August to September, 150,000 or so jobs, is in part-time work
* If you look at the large jump in employees holding down multiple jobs - the government reports that
* There was a big jump in September in the number of Americans who have more than one job
* So obviously what's happening is that people with one job are getting a second job and peop...

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