Jobs And Jay
It's the first week of a new month and you know what that means: Top-tier US macro data. Lots of it.
The big event's obviously payrolls. Economists expect to hear the US added 146,000 jobs in September.
Assuming consensus and, naively, no revisions, the three-month moving average for the NFP headline would move up to 126,000. But there will be revisions. And, as market participants were reminded following the last US jobs report, the revisions can be more meaningful than the headline for monet
I’m still more concerned about how the fiscal side of the government plays out.
At this junction, a certain amount of austerity makes sense. But you wouldn’t want the spending cuts/tax hikes to trigger a recession either… not when you also would like to redirect some federal spending towards the militaro-industrial complex/the relocation of elements of the supply chain in friendly territories…
“Never mind if those openings are a good fit for the people who could ostensibly fill them. And vice versa.”
Well, something isn’t quite right:
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/young-american-men-lost-c1d799f7?st=7BGhFs&reflink=article_copyURL_share
I would guess neutral for funds is 2-3%. We are a long way from 3%, but the Fed could easily go 1/4% in November and then go bigger in December if jobs and gdp slows faster after that. I think they should cut faster, but if we get a decent wage and employment numbers before November they could argue that they have the leeway to go slow.
Destruction from Hurricane Helene is likely to materially affect employment, spending, and other data, across the South-East. Economists and analysts will have quite an adjustment task.
Standard homeowner’s insurance does not, to my knowledge, cover flood or mudslide. I don’t know what portion of the loss will be covered, but insurers’ (nonplussed) stock price action looks unpromising for Helene’s victims.
Yeah, thank God I didn’t choose Asheville when I moved away from the island last year. It was short-listed. I was seriously considering it. I’ve been to Asheville many, many times. I can’t believe what happened up there. If you’ve ever been, it’s on a big hill. My knowledge of topography is about as robust as my knowledge of meteorology (which is to say not-at-all-robust), but I don’t understand how that happened.
Early estimates of total physical and economic damage from Helene substantially exceed $100BN. Early estimates of insured loss are mid-single-digit billions. Over $100BN of uninsured loss has got to be a regional economic shock.