Ep. 165: Markets In Denial About Jobs As Trump Lets Truth Slip About Debt

* Today we got the government's Non-Farm Payroll report, otherwise known as the Jobs Report, for the month of April and pretty much all the mainstream Wall Street guys were looking for another strong report
* In fact, earlier in the week Goldman Sachs was out saying that the 200,000 consensus estimate was too low!
* The optimism was unfazed by the much weaker than expected ADP report I spoke about on my last podcast on Wednesday, which came in much lighter than expected
* So, people didn't care, they said, "That's a one-off event, we're still looking for a good number, and we got a weak report
* Instead of 200,000 jobs we only got 160,000 jobs
* And they actually revised down the last couple of months
* But let's get into some of the details, because it gets worse, the further beneath the surface you look
* The unemployment rate held steady at 5%; they were expecting it to notch down to 4.9% - that did not happen
* Private payrolls also much lighter than expected; they were looking for 195,000; they got 171,000 and they revised down last month's from 195K to 184K
* They did get the .3% increase in average hourly earnings, but they forgot to point out that they revised month's .3% increase down to .2% so you can chalk that one up as a miss, despite the fact that nobody was talking about it
* The bigger miss was in the Labor Force Participation Rate
* Last month it was 63%, which was a move up, but in April it came back down to 62.8%
* 562,000 people left the labor force during the month of April
* A massive exodus led by young people
* A breakdown in the Household Survey for ages 20-24 reported 155,000 job losses in April
* For ages 25 - 54 - 284,000 jobs losses
* For ages over the age of 55 - this is the highest it has ever been
* Janet Yellen still wants to pretend that the reason the Labor Force Participation Rate is declining is because the Baby Boom is retiring - how much longer is she going to get away with that lie?
* The Baby Boom is too broke to retire
* The people leaving the workforce are young people in their 20's and 30's
* A breakdown of job gains by sector shows the biggest sector is professional business and temporary services - 56,000 gains
* Healthcare and education was high, and leisure and hospitality came in third
* Manufacturing barely gained any jobs after a huge loss the prior month
* Wholesale trade barely gained any
* Construction, after a big jump last month - only 1,000 jobs
* Retail trade lost 3,000 jobs
* Mining and logging continues to lose jobs
* On a good note, government actually lost jobs
* That's a good thing - we don't need so many people working for government - they're not productive
* Rick Santelli made a very good point today on CNBC, talking about all the jobs created at the TSA
* We're not better off with those jobs - they decrease our productivity
* As I mentioned on my last podcast, we've now had 2 consecutive quarters of losses in productivity
* Despite this bad jobs report, the market shrugged it off
* The stock market rallied because bad news is good news - the odds of a Fed rate hike are now the lowest they've ever been
* If you look at the Foreign Exchange markets, the dollar was broadly higher today
* It was up big against the Australian dollar because the Reserve Bank of Australia lowered their inflation forecast
* They lowered it from 2-3% to 1-2%
* You would think that's good news, because it means the cost of living will rise only 1-2%
* Back in the day, news of low inflation sent a currency higher, because it was not losing purchasing power
* The news sent the Australian dollar tumbling because the market now expects the Australian Reserve will have to c... Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy