Hardly an auspicious day for the equity bulls as the rally from the Non-Farm Payrolls reported faded hard into the weekend close.
The NFP report came in on the high side of estimates. I looked over all the usual aspects to the number, and it appears that the usual suspects like Birth-Death and Seasonality are in line. And as a reminder, one should never substract the Birth Death imaginary jobs directly from the headline number. It goes into the unadjusted gross number which is then subject to seasonal adjustment, which in some months is quite impressively large.
One thing that struck me is that this was, because of the way in which the calendar dates fell, a five week reporting interval rather than four. It was not clear to me that the BLS adjusted properly for this.
On the other hand, there was some thought that agricultural hiring for planting has been late this year because of weather. Well, I cannot speak to that.
No matter, it is the longer term trend that is of more interest and meaning. And it seems to indicate that the US is adding low paying jobs, judging by the very slack median wage. Hardly the stuff of a recovery for Main Street.
The money printing bonuses for Wall Street continue. This is the set of ingredients one might expect to bake a stagflationary cake.
Have a pleasant weekend.
