Today’s Job’s report smashed expectations; coming in at 242,000 new jobs created versus the Wall Street consensus estimate of 195,000. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.9%. Not bad, but sometimes the devil is in the details.
The majority of the jobs created were in the service and retail sales sectors. Manufacturing jobs fell by 16,000, which showed continued slowing in that sector. Wage growth (average hourly earnings) fell 0.1% month-on-month and rose 2.2% year-on-year, both missing what was expected.
There are certainly more aspects of the report that could be discussed, but zenruption only covers what matters.
Essentially, hiring is resilient but the hiring is dominated by lower wage jobs. Wage growth is not as robust as it should be at this employment percentage and the slowdown in manufacturing continues to be troubling.
Jobs are still growing and it might be a good time to solicit that raise you have been waiting for as the labor pool continues to tighten. A hard time for your boss to find new employees should mean more money for you.
The likelihood of an interest rate increase by the Federal Reserve in the near future is still minimal. Inflation is still below 2% and wages aren’t growing enough. A global slowdown is still happening and could threaten the U.S. economy.
Zenruption does not expect to see an increase in interest rates on loans or a significant market bounce as a result of today’s job’s report.
Feature photo courtesy of Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license
Lina Martinez has her B.S. in journalism and is a contributor to our politics, life and money pages. She once admitted over drinks to singing "Careless Whisper" in the shower. We are still trying to get her to sing it at karaoke.