Jobs Report: Sluggish but a welcome break in the sense of decline

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Today's jobs report was sluggish, but a mild surprise on the upside and thus a helpful break from the long string of negative-surprises and diminishing expectations.

The Dow futures jumped over 100 points this morning when the report came out, even though the report was kind of blah.

That suggests a lot of short-covering (Actually, using futures long bets to hedge existing shorts)-- a disproportion of folks who were betting on a worse than expected report. Betting the under was becoming an automatic play. And why not? We've had a long string of worse than expected. Good to break up that kind of mass-sentiment.


As to the specifics of the report, Calculated Risk says:

The underlying details of the employment report were mixed. The positives: the upward revisions to the June and July reports, a slight increase in hours worked for manufacturing employees (flat for all employees), an increase in hourly wages, and the decrease in the long term unemployed. Other positives include the slight increase in the employment-population ratio and the participation rate.

The negatives include the hiring of only 60,000 ex-Census, the increase in the unemployment rate (including U-6), and the increase in part time workers for economic reasons.

Overall this was a weak report and is consistent with a sluggish recovery.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/09/employment-population-ratio-part-time.html

[ixion]

1. "sucks every so slightly less on paper" is the new great.

just ducky. :eyes:

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. ...