In today's piece earlier Are We About To Get JOLTED? I stated that I had no idea what the JOLTS number would be but IF it was strong it seemed to have implications for the NFP numbers.
That number was not strong, so the analysis is a "moot point"
However, here is the problem....A rise in JOLTS is pretty one dimensional. When more jobs are available then there is a decent likelihood that the following month more people will be employed, and that is I believe what the table in this morning's piece showed.
However, a sharp fall in JOLTS is 2 dimensional. JOLTS can fall because
- Employers pull job openings
-Employers hire people
We do not know what scenario this is. In that respect look at the table below of instances when we have seen an actual versus actual fall in JOLTS month on month and what has happened the following month on NFP
In 11 of the 15 times this has happened since the peak in JOLTS, NFP has beaten the following month. In the 4 times it has missed three of them were minor misses (minus 13 to minus 23k) and one a little higher at minus 65k (April 2024)
As we can see we have a lot more and bigger positive misses.
The other numbers that came out today were the Consumer Confidence numbers. We saw an aggressive positive beat on the overall number, the present situation number and the expectations number. We also saw prior headline and expectations numbers revised higher.
Is this what you would expect IF the drop in JOBS available had been due to an aggressive pulling of job openings by employers? That does not seem highly likely.
We also saw the Oil price fall sharply in August-Sept (good for consumers and businesses) and the Equity market rally strongly.
Yes, it is obviously still possible we could have a downside miss on NFP- any one number can come out anywhere.
However, positioning for a downside miss based on this JOLTS number does not look to be a logical approach.