Friday we found out that 533,000 Americans lost their job in November, the highest decline in non-farm payrolls in 34 years. The consensus expectation was a drop between 300,000 and 320,000. Despite this awful number the market took it well. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down about 250 points in early morning trading—barely worth a mention given recent moves— and actually ended the day at 8635.42, up 259.18 points.
When you add the revisions from previous months that number grows to 732,000 jobs and the net job loss over the last three months is 1.26 million.
Some will spin this as positive news and a sign of a bottom—as analysts tend to do when the market rallies on extremely bad news. But the market has seen several spectacular rallies in the midst of this current downturn and there have been scores of analysts willing to put other people’s money on the line through their predictions of a bottom. As long as they keep calling a bottom they will eventually be right. I don’t want to sound like a black cloud but Friday’s news was bad and all things being equal, I would have preferred to see a record increase in jobs and the market tanking than what we got.
Tags: non-farm payrolls, Unemployment
