With a number that many warned would be impacted by not one by two hurricanes and as such the forecast range was extremely wide, from 105K to 253K, moments ago the BLS reported that indeed consensus was way off when it announced that in October payrolls soared by 250K, just shy of the highest Wall Street estimate, and more than double last month's downward revised 118K (down from 134K). At the same time, August was revised up from +270,000 to +286,000, offseting the upward revision in August. After revisions, job gains have averaged 218,000 over the past 3 months.
Still, like last month, one should be careful with today's weather-affect month: as Bloomberg economist Tim Mahedy writes, "just as economists should have avoided conclusions last month when payrolls surprised on the downside at 118k, today’s strong print of 250k should be understood in the context of payback from Hurricane Florence.'"
Oddly, while the BLS reported that a whopping 198K workers were unable to work due to bad weather...
... what is curious about the number is that according to the BLS, "Hurricane Michael had no discernible effect on the national employment and unemployment estimates for October, and response rates for the two surveys were within normal ranges."
Commenting on the weather, Bloomberg economist Yelena Shulyatyeva said that "Hurricane Michael had a significant impact on employment and hours worked in October, even though there was no discernible impact on the headline payroll print. Absences from work due to bad weather (198k) were three times higher than the average of 62k for the month in the previous 10 years. Weather-related hour curtailments (1020k) were five times above their historical average of 208k.''
Going back to the data, the unemployment rate in October remained unchanged at 3.7%, as the number of employed workers (Household Survey) soared by 600K to a record 156.562MM employed Americans, while the number unemployed rose modestly to 6.075MM from 5.964M.
One data point that will no doubt be seized upon by Trump with the midterms next week, is that Hispanic unemployment dropped to a record low (even as joblessness for black Americans rose fractionally) White and Asian unemployment are hanging in the low 3s.
The people not in the labor force shrank by nearly half a million, from 96.364MM to 95.877M. The labor force participation rate rose from 62.7% to 62.9%, well above the 62.7% consensus estimate.
That's a big jump in the participation rate, which suggests consumer confidence will remain at a high level.
But the most important part of today's report is that the increase in average hourly earnings jumped by 3.1%, in line with expectations and up from 2.8% in September. As we previewed overnight, this was the highest print since April 2009.
More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...wages-spike-31
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