NFP payrolls rose by 311,000, beating Bloomberg’s forecast of 205,000. This number confirms the continued strength of the overall economy, at least according to the key indicators followed by the NBER BCDC plus S&P Global (nee IHS Markit) monthly GDP.
figure 1: Nonfarm payrolls, NFP (dark blue), Bloomberg 3/9 consensus (blue+), civilian employment (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding 2012 China transfers (green), manufacturing and Trade Sales Ch.2012 USD (black), Ch.2012 USD Consumption (light blue) and Ch.2012 USD Monthly GDP (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Q3 Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Reserve, BEA 2022Q4 via FRED 2nd Edition, S&P Global/IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) (published March 1, 2023), and authors’ calculations.
Given the debate on the strength of the labor market, especially in relation to H1 2022 data, the chart below highlights the fact that if there is a slowdown in H1 2022 (especially Q2 2022), it is likely to largely reversed.
figure 2: CES February 2023 nonfarm payrolls (blue), Bloomberg consensus as of March 9 (red squares), household series adjusted for NFP concept (red), total workers covered by QCEW, using log transformation The Census X-13 is seasonally adjusted (turquoise), all 000, and sa light blue shading indicates a hypothetical 2022H1 recession. Sources: BLS, BLS QCEW, and authors’ calculations.
While job growth was higher than expected, this was revised downwards when the December and January figures combined were 55K; grade In terms of employment, the 311K translated into a 206K increase versus the consensus increase of 205K.
Here’s another picture of the evolution of the labor market, viewed from a different angle – total nonfarm payrolls, total private nonfarm payroll hours, civilian employment and private nonfarm payrolls for ADP nonfarm payrolls.
image 3: CES February 2023 nonfarm payrolls (blue), total hours (green), ADP’s private NFP series (tan), civilian employment (red), all sa, 2021M11=0 log. Light blue shading represents a hypothetical 2022H1 recession. Sources: BLS and ADP, from FRED, and authors’ calculations.
