Mixed Picture on Jobs Growth
From the AP:
Payroll growth stalls with 75,000 new jobs
"Job growth faltered in May, with employers boosting payrolls by just 75,000. Yet the nation's unemployment rate dipped to 4.6 percent, the lowest since the summer of 2001."
"The latest snapshot, released by the Labor Department on Friday, offered a mixed picture of the jobs climate. Wage growth, meanwhile, slowed, a development that should ease concerns about inflation getting out of hand."
"The count of new jobs generated last month — 75,000 — was the smallest since October, when hiring practically stalled as companies were jolted by fallout from the Gulf Coast hurricanes. Job gains for March and April turned out to be weaker than previously reported."
"On the other hand, the unemployment rate dropped a notch from 4.7 percent in April to 4.6 percent in May, the lowest since July 2001."
However, somewhat more intesting, it seems like the payroll data may have been leaked early.
From Reuters:
Market moves before jobs report raise suspicion
"A group of well-timed trades raised eyebrows on Friday after stock futures and Treasury bond prices jumped and the dollar fell sharply in the seconds before the U.S. Labor Department officially published its May nonfarm payrolls report."
"The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said it did not release the key data on the Internet before embargo time. "There were no timestamps between June 1, 8:30 a.m. (when revisions to first-quarter productivity data were released) and June 2, 8:30 a.m.," said Gary Steinberg, a bureau spokesman."
"Steinberg said earlier that the carefully controlled release of the numbers to reporters had proceeded as normal."
"In the 15 seconds before the 8:30 a.m. Friday official release, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell 3.5 basis points to 5.072 percent."
"As for the dollar, the euro gained 0.15 percent against the greenback in the 12 seconds leading up to the release."
"The S&P 500 index futures jumped 0.4 of a point six seconds before, at 8:29:54 -- the biggest absolute change in price on the contract in a single move in the minutes leading up to the release of the data."
"'It was either great anticipation by traders or someone had the number early,' said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Alaron Trading Corp."
Payroll growth stalls with 75,000 new jobs
"Job growth faltered in May, with employers boosting payrolls by just 75,000. Yet the nation's unemployment rate dipped to 4.6 percent, the lowest since the summer of 2001."
"The latest snapshot, released by the Labor Department on Friday, offered a mixed picture of the jobs climate. Wage growth, meanwhile, slowed, a development that should ease concerns about inflation getting out of hand."
"The count of new jobs generated last month — 75,000 — was the smallest since October, when hiring practically stalled as companies were jolted by fallout from the Gulf Coast hurricanes. Job gains for March and April turned out to be weaker than previously reported."
"On the other hand, the unemployment rate dropped a notch from 4.7 percent in April to 4.6 percent in May, the lowest since July 2001."
However, somewhat more intesting, it seems like the payroll data may have been leaked early.
From Reuters:
Market moves before jobs report raise suspicion
"A group of well-timed trades raised eyebrows on Friday after stock futures and Treasury bond prices jumped and the dollar fell sharply in the seconds before the U.S. Labor Department officially published its May nonfarm payrolls report."
"The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said it did not release the key data on the Internet before embargo time. "There were no timestamps between June 1, 8:30 a.m. (when revisions to first-quarter productivity data were released) and June 2, 8:30 a.m.," said Gary Steinberg, a bureau spokesman."
"Steinberg said earlier that the carefully controlled release of the numbers to reporters had proceeded as normal."
"In the 15 seconds before the 8:30 a.m. Friday official release, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell 3.5 basis points to 5.072 percent."
"As for the dollar, the euro gained 0.15 percent against the greenback in the 12 seconds leading up to the release."
"The S&P 500 index futures jumped 0.4 of a point six seconds before, at 8:29:54 -- the biggest absolute change in price on the contract in a single move in the minutes leading up to the release of the data."
"'It was either great anticipation by traders or someone had the number early,' said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Alaron Trading Corp."
26 Comments:
The Soothsayers are sugar coating the news by highlighting
"UnEmployment figures lowest since 2001"
They dont highlight that some people just reached the deadline of unemployment benefits - this is how the figures go down.
I don't believe these 'soft ' numbers for a second.
The job market & economy is booming in NYC area where everyone seems to have a ton of money to spend on clothes, restaurants, & live in the right neighborhood.
Ever read the articles in the NY times Real Estate section on Sunday?? Everyone is making in the six figures and spending $$$ on co-ops & condos.
Still if you are making less than six figures you feel like you are living in poverty & you can only stay in the metro area anywhere if you have a rent stabilized apartment. Buying anything in any boro or NNJ is out of the question.
Prices will fall but not by much. Prices will range from either -5% - +10% by this time in 2007.
How convienient just before the next rate hike. How much longer can this easy money go on where people pay $700,000 for a condo under 1000 square feet.
Oh yeah, everyone wants to live here & have the sex in the city lifestyle
Yes! Home sweet home on sale
============================
Toll Brothers gives everything away FREE!!!
#1 Anonymous
Have you heard? Because Toll can no longer sell ANYTHING at Hudson Tea, the sales people are now being allowed to include FREE upgrades, incentives and even PARKING!!! This is quite upsetting to those of us who spent THOUSANDS of dollars on these amenities and now they GIVE THEM AWAY.
Posted on: 2006/6/2 11:11
Re: Toll Brothers gives everything away FREE!!!
#2 anonymous
if you buy anything at all in this universe at top dollar and it goes on sale "tomorrow," you have no recourse whatsoever.
Go ahead, write.
Posted on: 2006/6/2 11:17
Re: Toll Brothers gives everything away FREE!!!
#3 Anonymous
That's the mkt you played in. You probably bought thinking things were going up or were not going to come down. Like any investment, those are the risks. Also, HTB needs to do things to attract buyers because the comp is fierce and HTB offers nothing vs newer construction.
Posted on: 2006/6/2 11:23
Re: Toll Brothers gives everything away FREE!!!
#4 Anonymous
It is Toll's strategy not to drop prices. As a result, they will do anything possible to move units including giving everything away free, and other interesting perks such as in financing.
Don't complain on a public board. They want satisfied customers. Go discuss your options with them.
Posted on: 2006/6/2 11:29
Re: Toll Brothers gives everything away FREE!!!
#5 Anonymous
not sure i understand the complaint. incentives like free parking and upgrades are just a roundabout way of lowering the prices. would you still be angry if they instead lowered the price of the unit $35K but parking still cost $35K?
simple economics here. demand is lower, price has to come down.
Posted on: 2006/6/2 13:17
Chicago-
Did I miss something, is this from your Hudson Tea board?
JM
Grim:
Why is the 10 year yield dropping through the floor?
"They dont highlight that some people just reached the deadline of unemployment benefits - this is how the figures go down."
Either the unemployment stat has value, or it doesn't.
If it had value before Bush took office in 2001, then it should have the same value after he took office.
I don't trust the "mainstream" media when it comes to reporting on the economy, including Reuters.
A positive of 75,000 new jobs created is turned into a negative because the number "fell below economist expectations."
They "report" the same thing for a month when 150,000 new jobs are created, because it wasn't 160,000.
Too much agenda and bias are inserted to obfuscate the real information.
Gary,
Because the price of the 10Y went through the roof? :)
I can't tell you why, because I don't know, but I have an opinion (as does everyone else).
Flight to quality in an environment of lowered inflation expectations.
grim
Although I'm not even sure I believe my opinion, especially with crude back up to $72 and hurricane season just starting..
grim
Hey Chicago, Some real variance in the prices people are paying at HTB. Looks like over the last few months anywhere from $400K to $1,400K. Not that many sells though.
JM
Thanks, Grim. Yeah, I can't tell which way is up anymore.
JM or anyone:
If anyone could provide me with HTB closes for 2006 after February 1st - unit and price. I will be eternally grateful!
Seriously, I would offer some kind of barter!!!!
gary said...
Grim:
Why is the 10 year yield dropping through the floor?
3:27 PM
It is the market pricing in fewer Fed hikes in 2006, and possibly some cuts.
Personally - they are friggin' nutz, but Treasury buyers are roughly 50% off-shore investors, and the USD is going to take a bath, so good gumbo for them.
The real estate market is going to tank no matter what happens to the Ten. However, if we get the Ten sold off through 6%, there will be a wholesale and immediate epic collapse.
chicago
Chicago-
I'll email the info to Grim about HTB from the source I have.
We can talk later about the barter.
JM
Does anyone know what happened to the blog site: America's Overvalued Real Estate (overvalued blogspot.com).
It all of a sudden ended about a week agao and now it's a commercial real estate site!
(total garbage)
I really miss it and the overvalued real estate postings from all over the US. A while ago there was even a hilariously teeny-tiny island for sale from Canada.
OOOPs! I posted that last question in the wrong section.
Compare the economic reporting from the Associated Press and Reuters to this UPI report:
U.S. unemployment 4.6 percent, wages up
WASHINGTON, June 2 (UPI) -- U.S. non-farm payroll employment rose 75,000 in May to leave the nation's unemployment rate steady at 4.6 percent, even as wages kept rising.
The Labor Department also said Friday that from January through April of this year, payroll employment growth averaged 164,000 per month.
Average hourly earnings for private sector production and non-supervisory workers edged up by 1 cent over the month, following a 10-cent increase in April. Since January, average hourly earnings have risen by 3.7 percent.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060602-091156-5072r
Quite a difference once all the obfuscation from the AP and Reuters is removed, and simply the facts are reported.
JM:
Merci Beau-yaaaaaaaaaa
chicago
Chicago-
You'll have to hold off on the thanks for a few days. I was running out of my office and forgot the notepad I wrote the info down on.
I'll send it to Grim on Monday. Enjoy your weekend.
JM
That headline "mixed" is a bit misleading. The headline number, new jobs, is plain bad. As noted by anon, the unemployment rate going down to 4.6 is misleading.
There are a lot of moving parts to the economy, even a single stat like jobs. Back it up into the population employment ration (see Angrybear.blogspot.com for the graph) and you'll get a better idea of the situation.
Short version, in 2000 the pop. employment ration was about 64.5 percent, today it's at 63 percent.
The numbers mean the same for Bush as for everybody else, but that means all the numbers, no cherrypicking.
for the record, I usually post as Lindsey
"In which case you should complain to the economists, not Reuters."
Not at all, to this day Reuters still refuses to refer to 9-11 as a "terrorist attack," and also refuses to include the word "terrorist" in any of their reporting on terrorist acts.
They have an agenda.
There is no winning, because when 150,000 jobs were created, they would report that it was "below expectations."
As mentioned before, compare and contrast with the UPI report above.
Here is an interesting (opposite to MSM) take on the job report, by Lawrence Kudlow (CNBC):
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/06/more_than_half_full.html
So it was with Friday's 75,000 increase in non-farm payrolls for May. That number was greeted derisively, despite the fact that over the past 33 consecutive months, 5.3 million new jobs have been created. Through the year ending in May, 1.9 million new jobs have been created with the unemployment rate moving down to 4.6 percent -- the lowest rate in nearly five years and below the average of the last forty-five years.
But wait -- there's even more good news being clouded out by the pessimist frowns: The Labor Department's household survey, which focuses on self-employed owner-operators of new entrepreneurial businesses, showed a booming May jobs increase of 288,000. You won't likely hear a peep about this in the mainstream media, which shuns this survey month after month....Right now, total employment in the U.S. stands at a record high of 144 million.
Grim Ghost, we can disagree on this, but I've studied the media, how they craft headlines, how they place stories, how they bury pertient facts in a story, etc, and the "mainstream" media are unreliable when reporting the economy of a president they hate.
Also, economist predictions are moot. Predictions are not facts, and are essentially worthless.
The UPI story (above) reported the facts, and left the crystal ball obfuscation home.
pertient = pertinent
Some interesting comparisons between John Snow, Robert Rubin, and others:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/06/03/business/20060603_CHARTS_GRAPHIC.html
(triple-click to select long links)
Economic Growth
Snow: +3.8%
Rubin: +3.8%
Employment Growth
Snow: +1.6%
Rubin: +1.5%
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