“Davidson” submits:
Establishment Survey rises 275,000 while the Household Survey declines -184,000. The difference between these reports is assumed to be the level of self-employed which declined to levels near the COVID lockdown level. Some analysts have claimed the data has been manipulated to support the current administration’s reelection chances. The claim comes from excessive hiring by government and is captured by the Establishment Survey detail that shows government employees surged from Feb 2022’s 22,052,000 to Jan 2024’s 23,180,000. The current level of government employment stands at a historic high topping even the near 1mil short-term employment added by the Obama Administration in an effort to stimulate economic activity post-Sub-Prime Recession Apr 2010. I will leave it to others to infer intent. Note: The Household Survey which is intended to capture general employment has stalled while Personal Income, Retail Sales and other key ‘hard counts’ of economic activity remain non-recessionary in the face of nearly every sentiment-based indicator forecasting a hard recession (I say “nearly” because I cannot locate any that are positive and I may have missed one).
With institutional investors clearly skewed to a few high-tech issues which drives the SP500 higher (the top 10-20), much of the rest (the remaining 480) continue to offer historical discounts to their strong financial performances.
The employment reports are sloppy but industrial US continues to expand and hire in many well-managed companies as the reports come in. That the bulk of investor capital is focused nearly singularly on high-tech means they miss the rest of world entirely. This is the typical environment for a generally rising market. This type of imbalance in the face of excellent but ignored corporate reports offers opportunity.
Excerpt from this report:
“Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 275,000 in February, and the unemployment rate increased to 3.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, in government, in food services and drinking places, in social assistance, and in transportation and warehousing…
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for December was revised down by 43,000, from +333,000 to +290,000, and the change for January was revised down by 124,000, from +353,000 to +229,000. With these revisions, employment in December and January combined is 167,000 lower than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)”
Article By ToddSullivan, ValuePlays
