Non-farm payroll employment in September was barely above consensus (263K vs. 250K), exhibiting continued progress. That is the image of the primary macroeconomic indicators tracked by the NBER’s enterprise cycle relationship committee, plus month-to-month GDP from IHS-Markit.
Determine 1: Non-agricultural wage employment (darkish blue), Bloomberg consensus at 10/4 for NFP (blue +), civilian employment (orange), industrial manufacturing (crimson), private revenue excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (inexperienced), trade and commerce gross sales in Ch.2012$ (black), consumption in Ch.2012$ (gentle blue) and month-to-month GDP in Ch.2012$ (pink), official GDP (blue bars), all logarithmic normalized to 2021M11=0. Lilac shading signifies dates related to a hypothetical first-half recession. Supply: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, by way of FRED, IHS Markit (née Macroeconomic Advisers) (revealed 4/10/2022) and writer’s calculations.
Amongst these, employment and private revenue excluding present transfers occupy a central place. Subsequently, the employment report is exceptional for its power (continued).
The preliminary revision to the benchmark signifies that the labor market has been stronger than the official NFP collection point out. In Determine 2, I present the official collection (blue), the revised implicit benchmark collection (gentle blue), and the Civilian Employment collection from the Present Inhabitants Survey, fitted to the non-farm payroll idea (crimson).
Determine 1: Non-farm payroll employment (darkish blue), implicit collection incorporating a preliminary benchmark revision (gentle blue), civilian employment adjusted to the idea of non-farm payroll (crimson), in 1000’s, sa, all on a logarithmic scale. Lilac shading signifies dates related to a hypothetical first-half recession. Supply: BLS and writer’s calculations.
Notice the continued progress within the labor collection even through the slowdown in GDP within the first half of the 12 months, which some observers have referred to as a interval of recession.