Posted on 11/30/2022 12:34:51 PM PST by Red Badger
Was it only a month ago that someone was, yet again, stuffing an ice cream cone into his maw and snapping back at a reporter’s question?
“Our economy is strong as hell.”
…Companies added just 127,000 positions for the month, a steep reduction from the 239,000 the firm reported for October and well below the Dow Jones estimate for 190,000. It also was the lowest total since January.
This doesn’t bode well for either the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies attempting to stem inflation and stave off a deep recession, nor encouraging for the job market going forward. The big number to take from the ADP report?
100,00 manufacturing jobs gone
Service industry jobs – waitresses and bartenders – do not keep an economy going, however hard those folks bust their buns. In many instances, they are also fallback gigs for laid-off workers from other sectors. Unnerving in any event.
…In the ADP report, the biggest sector gainer by far was leisure and hospitality, which saw an increase of 224,000.
However, that was offset by losses in manufacturing (-100,000), professional and business services (-77,000), financial activities (-34,000), and information services (-25,000). Goods-producing industries overall saw a decline of 86,000 jobs, while services firms added 213,000 on net.
But that hiring bump in the service industries won’t last if folks don’t have the money to go out. It’s getting dicey in the TV and streaming industries, too. Talk about “Breaking Bad” and bad breaks…
AMC Networks Inc. said it is planning to lay off about 20% of its U.S. employees, a sign of further disruption at a company that earlier Tuesday announced its chief executive had stepped down less than three months after taking the reins.
“We have determined we need to conserve resources at this time,” the entertainment company said Tuesday. “This will involve cutbacks in operations which unfortunately includes a large-scale layoff, impacting approximately 20% of our employees in the U.S.” AMC said it has about 1,000 U.S. employees.
And…well…huh.
Another batch of information the Fed takes into account when determining rate increases is the unemployment rate and the ratio of job openings to job seekers, which, to their minds, has been too high (running about 2-1). Their target rate is 1.2 job openings for every job seeker. A report that also dropped this morning – the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey or JOLTS – provides that snapshot for them. The JOLTS came in on a downward slide, as well, and has people raising warning flags about the Fed being overly aggressive. Job openings sank by 353,000 and “quits” (people who leave their job for a better opportunity) hit lows not seen in the past year, even as hiring dries up.
In more dismal economic news, the Chicago Purchasing Manager’s Index or PMI (used to measure the economic health of manufacturing in the Chicago region), came in today alarmingly under estimates.
Anything below a 50 reading indicates a retraction in the index. Generally, when the readings are in this territory, we are already in a recession. Sadly, there wasn’t a single positive thing to be gleaned from the report.
Let’s throw pending home sales numbers (largest annual drop ever)…
…and the GDP in there for good measure, too, since we’re all in on the economic-hell-in-a-handbasket stuff. Get it over with.
It does not paint a rosy picture, whatever the King of Cones insists. Not to mention the looming stressors at work besides printing money and spiraling inflation that have yet to hit. Diesel shortages and skyhigh prices remain. This little contretemps…
Railroads, unions draw their lines in sand as Biden, Congress move to prevent strike
I don’t know that folks who call Pelosi forcing them to work without 4 sick days a “blatant betrayal” are going to roll over...
…”I thought it was kind of laughable that anyone would think that either the Democrats or the Republicans actually cared. Bottom line, they care about money,” he said.
Even so, “there was always that hope in the back of my mind that maybe someone would do something that was actually right for the American worker for once — instead of just what’s right for corporate America.”
Gonna have to see how it shakes out.
Wrap all that mess in a blanket of lame-duck, fractious, bitterly divided Congress trying to jam through unpopular legislation, maybe even an Omnibus bill?
Yeah. Pfft.
Strong as hell.
Whatever. The stock markets are giving a middle-finger to all of this and skyrocketing upward today. So much manipulation ...
.
'Strong as' or 'Going to' ???
.
And I'll have the mint chocolate chip in a sugar cone please...
The King of Cones
Hair-tearing sells and ZeroHedge is full of economic losers who have been wrong about most everything for many years.
Raising the too low (really below zero) unemployment rate is exactly what we are after. That’s a lagging indicator, the Bond Market and Stock Markets are leading indicators, looking 6-18 months out.
Today has been a good-news day for America. It’s hasn’t been a good day for people at the economic bottom but that’s the landscape in any non-centralized control economy. The bottom suffers when the economy contracts as if must from time to time in even sort-of-capitalist economies like ours. That will never change.
And now, back to the sackcloth and ashes...
It isn’t manipulation. It’s millions of individual and companies worldwide making their economic predictions for the future, not today.
There are Day Traders but they are a small part of the action in the scope of those of us who invest for a lifetime.
100k manufacturing jobs LOST. What’s better for employees, their families and the economy, making tangible goods or selling burgers at McDonalds that are only flushed down the toilet? You need the manufacturing jobs so people can afford McDonalds.
Yes, it’s finally beginning. Which puts us closer to the next boom but there’s still a long way to go. Did you think all that spending, warring, COVID clampdowns and political graft wouldn’t require pain eventually for citizens?
“ The stock markets are giving a middle-finger to all of this and skyrocketing upward today. ”
That’s a reaction to the Fed saying interest rates won’t be going up as much.
Pain for working citizens. Prosperity for government employees. They don’t lose their jobs and they don’t make jack $hit.
I hate the stock market insider manipulators. They laughingly profit off our misery while Clinton, Obama and Biden triumph over us.
Screw them.
Prosperity for government employees. They don’t lose their jobs and they don’t make jack $hit.
That’s OK. You couldn’t get me to work one of those govt. jobs, I prefer the private sector life where you make your bets and take your chances. And when I fancy I’ll take my chances, chances will be taken, as the song goes.
A recession is part of the process of pressuring inflation down. They’re not aiming at increasing unemployment. Jobs are collateral damage along the way to smothering real estate and vehicle prices. I think it’s going to be a while.
“They laughingly profit off our misery while Clinton, Obama and Biden triumph over us.”
What self-defeatist BS.
You don’t use your own power and then blame them.
I think the market reads this as cause for easing of interest rate hikes.
The article is incorrect. The Federal Reserve is seeing their efforts come to fruition: To crash the jobs market and the economy to fight inflation. They want to crush demand for goods by creating higher unemployment and higher interest rates in the name of fighting inflation. Or at least, that's what they claim.
The root of all of this, imo, has nothing to do with the fed and everything to do with the nonsense of shutting down the worldwide economy for 2 years while Congress went handing out free money to those "unemployed due to worldwide closure". We ended up with lots of cash floating around and too few goods to produce or buy.
I’ve hired 4 new laborers last month. Does that count?
I know I’m an individualist here.
In the 1990s a GOP guy at work told me when I said “Why aren’t the investors withdrawing money and making the stock market go down to make Clinton look bad?”
He said: “They care strictly about themselves and even though they don’t like Clinton or his policies they look out for their own interests ahead of Americans’”
This is an extraordinarily outdated, shitty breakout of tech. It's a shame because ADP otherwise has a substantial grip on service and manufacturing.
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