Friday, March 9, 2012

Non-Farm Payrolls and US Trade Balance

Despite what Gallup found yesterday, which was not good and far more reliable as they don't screw with the employment picture using deceptive seasonal adjustments that allow the Department of Labor to come up with any number they wish by adjusting the seasonal adjustment, the NFP beat consensus coming in at 227k on expectations of 210k, but you may have noticed the market didn't go hog wild rally mode on the beat. Why? One reason may be that last month was adjusted higher from 243k to 284k making the 227k beat today look like a slide to both the adjusted and non-adjusted NFP from last month.

More importantly, Professional and Business services added 82k jobs in February with 45k of them being temporary positions. Another BLS adjustment, the Birth / Death Model added another 91k jobs.

The US Trade Balance printed a $52.5 billion deficit, the worst since Fall of 2008 (October more specifically), the 3 month trend is the largest drop since records have been kept ($9.4 bn). In essence, the Trade Deficit is not only rising, but rising at an accelerated pace.

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