Kevin Spires, CFA, FRM
With the monthly jobs report due out on Friday morning, I am reviewing my favorite employment indicators this week to get a sense of the underlying trend in employment. As I have written before, I don't think the Jobs Report itself is a very good data point, statistically speaking. For instance, the bls states that the confidence interval of the monthly change in jobs is +/- 100,000 jobs. Last month, 69k jobs were reportedly added in May, well below the 150k that the market was expecting about a week before the report - making the miss not statistically significant. Yet the S&P 500 dropped by over 2% after the release then rallied 6% from that day until the end of the month. Go figure.
Growth Rate of Temporary Workers predicts 200k+ jobs/month.
With the monthly jobs report due out on Friday morning, I am reviewing my favorite employment indicators this week to get a sense of the underlying trend in employment. As I have written before, I don't think the Jobs Report itself is a very good data point, statistically speaking. For instance, the bls states that the confidence interval of the monthly change in jobs is +/- 100,000 jobs. Last month, 69k jobs were reportedly added in May, well below the 150k that the market was expecting about a week before the report - making the miss not statistically significant. Yet the S&P 500 dropped by over 2% after the release then rallied 6% from that day until the end of the month. Go figure.
Growth Rate of Temporary Workers predicts 200k+ jobs/month.
The temporary workers head count in the jobs report is a good predictor of total job growth in the following 2-4 months. With strong growth earlier this year in temporary workers, one would expect 200k+ total new jobs per month. This Temp Workers indicator is especially good at predicting turning points, but has a lower correlation during expansions. No major contraction in employment is being predicted at this point, so if I could only look at this one indicator, I would say steady job growth will prevail.
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