Nonfarm payrolls: raining on the market's parade - Socgen

Kit Juckes, economist for Societe Generale reviewed the labour market data.

Key Quotes:

"The labour market data was strong but if you want to rain on the market's parade, the annual growth rate of employment slowed to 1.45% y/y, the weakest since March 2013, the broader U-6 measure of unemployment increased from 8.1% to 8.2% and the older series of non-supervisory workers' hourly wage growth, was steady at 2.43% y/y. It's probably not fair to dwell too much on these negatives, but as my colleague Omair Sharif put it in the piece he wrote after the data came out, the January jump in the headline average hourly earnings series, from 2.70 to 2.89%, may overstate the acceleration.

Good labour market data, but not ‘great' data. Still a ways to go....."