Yesterday’s nonfarm payrolls growth (here) is surprised (significantly) on the downside.
figure 1: Nonfarm payrolls released from July (blue), August (red), September (turquoise), October (pink), November (lilac), December (black), December consensus Calculated 1/6-Nov preliminary (light) Bloomberg consensus gray+), all in 000’s, sa Source: BLS, Bloomberg, author’s calculations.
The downside surprise is even more surprising considering the ADP for private nonfarm payrolls.
figure 2: 1/ Calculated from private nonfarm payrolls released in August (red), September (turquoise), October (pink), November (lavender), December (black), December consensus Bloomberg consensus June-November preliminary (light grey+), ADP (chartreuse), all in 000’s, sa Source: BLS, Bloomberg, author’s calculations.
Private NFP appears to be only slightly below consensus, as I calculated the consensus level by adding the consensus changes to the initial release level in November, and the number for November was bumped up.
Consistent upward revisions over the past few months suggest that December data will also be revised upwards as well.
Other indicators of overall labor market development rose faster: total weekly hours worked (private non-farm production/non-supervised workers) and civilian employment rose
image 3: December releases of nonfarm payrolls (black), total weekly hours worked (red), civilian employment (turquoise), logarithmic, 2021M04=0. Source: BLS and author’s calculations.
While the growth rate and number of civilian employment increased faster (0.42% vs. 0.13%, 651K vs. 199K), mentioned earlier, it doesn’t make sense to put too much weight between this series and the ones based on establishment [1]. A paper just circulated underscores this Goto, Jacobs, Sinclair, Van Norden.
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