The June employment report on Thursday showed that the jobless rate fell to 11.1%, from 13.3% in May, while nonfarm payrolls gained 4.8 million, substantially more than the three million that had been projected. It was the second straight month of better-than-expected jobs results. - from a Marketwatch report I won't link because it contained no real value.
Not in this narrow report, over 3MM people filed for unemployment in June and 1.5MM last week. What is difficult to understand at this stage is how many temporary furloughs are we trading for permanent job losers? I don't have answers yet but as you can see from my trading today, I'm not feeling confident.
As Court and others have said, many jobs are not coming back. What percentage, we don't know but it's not insignificant.
Jerome Powell said that adding 2.5MM jobs in May was “maybe the biggest data surprise that anyone can remember.” Really? It's not Greenspan who "never saw it coming". Really? Where do they find these idiots?
My point is that temporary furloughs are a sunburn. Permanent job loses are melanoma. Keep your eyes on this. The market may be forward looking but it's not that smart. It's just a bunch of mid level sales people following the algorithms of mid level analysts who design software to follow the consensus opinion of people like Powell who apparently has his eye on the shiny object and is missing the context in which it shines.
The immediate future is more dark than light. Be safe.
