Succinct Summation of the Week's Events

Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events:

Positives,

1)September payrolls grew by 336k, about double the estimate and the two prior months were revised up by 119k (ALL DUE TO AN INCREASE IN GOVERNMENT as private sector downward revisions totaled 12k in the two prior months). Helping the September headline print was a 73k person increase in government hiring (mostly at the state level) as the private sector added 263k of the 336k, though still well above the estimate of 160k. Hours worked were unchanged at 34.4 and hourly wages grew by .2% m/o/m and 4.2% y/o/y, both one tenth less than expected. Combining the two has average weekly earnings higher by .2% m/o/m and 3.5% y/o/y. The participation rate held at 62.8% as it did for the 25-54 yr old cohort at 83.5%. The employment to population ratio also was unchanged at 60.4%. The diffusion index, measuring the breadth of the job gains, rose to 64.2 from 62.2 and that’s the best since January. Smoothing out the monthly volatility, and looking ONLY at the private sector because of the variabilities in monthly government hiring over the past 3 months, has the 3 month private sector job gain at 195k vs the 6 month average 184k, the 12 month average of 214k and the 2022 average of 376k.

2)Initial jobless claims remained low for the week ended 9/30 at 207k, 3k less than expected and vs 205k last week. The 4 week average fell to 209k from 211k and that is the least since mid February. For the week ended 9/23, continuing claims fell a slight 1k to 1.664mm which is just off the smallest amount since January.

3)The number of job openings in August totaled 9.61mm, up from 8.92mm in July and above the estimate of 8.82mm. This figure peaked at 12.03mm in March 2022. While job openings rose, the hiring rate stayed the same at 3.7% which is the lowest since immediately seen during the shutdowns in April 2020. The quit rate at 2.3% was also unchanged m/o/m, at the lowest since it was previously seen in January 2021.