Unemployment Holds, Yet Corporations More Than Double Hiring Expectations

Before you were setting yourself to get overly excited about today’s jobs data, there is a camp that believes the jobs data was as relevant as gold to a dead man unless it came in much better than expected.  It did come in much better than expected.  This is based upon October data that was before the election and was before the Obama administration took a conciliatory stance that may compromise on taxes and how it deals with business.  The jobs data was also pre-QE2 data.

The October non-Farm Payrolls added a sharp count of 151,000 jobs in October, and the unemployment came in at 9.6%.  Both Bloomberg and Dow Jones had identical estimates at 60,000 added jobs and 9.6% as the official unemployment count.  The official unemployment count was flat, but this is more than double what was expected on the payrolls.  The figure from the private sector was the cause with gains of 159,000 jobs.  Just keep in mind that the workforce also posted a large decline.

Healthcare jobs are considered private sector and that added 24,000 jobs; manufacturing lost 7,000 jobs; and government workers lost 8,000 bodies.  Within professional and business services, employment in temporary help services rose by 35,000; Retail trade employment rose by 28,000 in October; mining was up 8,000.  The standout figure includes those who are under-worked and/or temporary and contract that are still hoping for a better job and that figure dropped only 0.1% to 17% in October.

The average work week was up 0.1 hours to 34.3 hours and average wages rose $0.05 from September to $22.73  per hour.

Stocks remain mixed after yesterday’s monumental gains to a close not seen in two years.

JON C. OGG