Stocks may have ended the week with a gain last week, but it didn’t end the week on a bullish note. Every bit of last week’s 0.9% advance (and then some) was reaped on Monday, with the market drifting lower over the course of the last three days of the week.
Still, stocks hang in the balance between bullishness and bearishness… squarely in the middle.
Surprisingly, big unemployment news didn’t rock the market out of its rut. Don’t assume Friday’s employment report can’t still have a market-moving impact this week, though. It’s taken a lot of recent economic data two or three days to start getting traction in investors’ minds.
With that as the backdrop, a deeper look at last week’s biggest economic news is merited.
Economic Data
While last week’s economic dance card was full, the only item of any real interest was Friday’s snapshot of October’s unemployment situation.
What you likely already know: In October, the unemployment rate fell to a multi-year low of 5.0% following the creation of 271,000 new jobs. It was a much-needed piece of evidence that the economy can and will create a significant number of jobs after several months of lackluster job growth.
Unemployment and Job Growth Chart
Source: Thomas Reuters
What’s a little more obscure: While payroll growth and sinking unemployment point to employment progress, those are hardly the only measures saying this job growth trend is real, healthy. The hourly earnings rate advanced 0.4% last month (versus expectations for a 0.2% increase). That prolongs a long-term growth trend in wages, but it’s worth adding that employers aren’t offsetting higher pay with fewer hours. Last month, the average number of hours worked rolled in at 34.5 hours per week, where it’s stabilized for quite some time.
Average Wage and Workweek Growth Chart
Source: Thomas Reuters
Finally, although it’s not one of the data sets usually touted in the monthly employment report, the total number of people with jobs continues to rise, while the total number of people without jobs (officially or unofficially) continues to broadly drift lower. As of last month, 142.654 million people in the United States have jobs.. a record. Conversely, though the number of people unemployed (receiving unemployment benefits) plus the number of people not working but also not receiving unemployment benefits lifted slightly, both of those figures are trending downward.
Leave A Comment