Nonfarm payrolls surprise (release) up 675K vs Bloomberg consensus 400K, private NFP 654K vs 478K. The 90% confidence interval for the change is +/- 120K (BLS). Still, the upside surprise did not change the overall picture of key business cycle indicators.
figure 1: Nonfarm payrolls released in February (yellow-green), January (red), 12/21 (turquoise), Bloomberg February consensus (pink square), all 000, calculated based on the February consensus, adding 3 Bloomberg consensus of /1 added to preliminary January data. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bloomberg, author calculations.
figure 2: Nonfarm Payrolls (Dark Blue), Bloomberg 3/1 Consensus (Blue+), Industrial Production (Red), 2012 USD excluding Transferred Personal Income (Green), 2012 USD Manufacturing and Trade Sales (black), January 2012 consumption (light blue) and 2012 monthly GDP (pink), all log normalized to 2020M02=0. NBER defines recession dates, peaks and valleys, shades of gray. Source: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, via FRED, IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) (published March 1, 2022), NBER, and author’s calculations.
Latest observation: Wage growth moderated in February, with average real wages still above pre-pandemic levels.
image 3: Average hourly earnings of non-farm employment (production and non-regulatory), in USD/hour (black), CPI (chartreuse), both logarithmic 2020M02=0. Recession dates as defined by NBER are from peak to trough. Source: BLS, NBER, and author’s calculations.
