Market headlines can pull you off course; you need to keep your eyes on the real data in front of you. Just like on the ocean, you can’t let the instruments do everything; sometimes you need to look at the water for yourself. Take a look at some of these charts below:
- Scroll to Nonfarm Payrolls (slide 34) and take a look at the major surprise jump in the number of payrolls reported today. A total of 130,000 were reported, while analysts polled by Bloomberg had predicted a much smaller 65,000.
- Click over a couple more slides and you’ll see that average weekly initial jobless claims (the four-week moving average) is extremely low at only 212,250.
- Slide 39, average weekly hours for manufacturing employees are booming at 41.6 hours. At some point, these manufacturers are going to need to hire more employees to pick up the extra work.
- Despite the good labor news, consumers are still having confidence issues. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence survey, (slide 29) is at 84.5. It hasn’t been that low since May of 2014. Increasingly, these surveys are widely divergent among respondents who identify with different political parties. Confidence today among Republicans is actually quite high, while for Democrats it is at basement-dweller levels.
- For some additional evidence that the underlying economy is strong, take a look at slide 30, Young Research’s Moving the Goods Index. It’s surging.
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