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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (14928)	11/5/2004 11:05:12 AM
From: zonder	Respond to of 116555

US Employment Growth Gets Hurricane Assistance ...............................................Oct............Sept Nonfarm payrolls..............337k.................... 96k Unemployment rate (%)..........5.5....................5.4 Ave. hourly earnings (%).......0.3....................0.1 Nonfarm payrolls growth surged ahead in October, growing by 337k - around twice as much as expected by market consensus. At the same time, the unemployment rate rose as formerly discouraged workers sought employment. Strong areas of growth were in construction (+71k) where The BLS noted that construction employment was, ..."boosted by cleanup and reconstruction efforts in hurricane-affected areas of the Southeast." Even taking this distortion into account, the employment situation has improved. In the last five months payrolls have increased by 171k - just above the 150k needed to keep up with the growth in the workforce but below the rate recorded in the fast phase of economic growth in the last cycle when jobs growth averaged 228k in the 1995 to 2001 period. Conclusion : Although the hurricane effect is significant over the past two months, the strength of growth in employment in October cannot be ignored. The volatility of this data series is also important to factor into any sober assessment but the moving averages are heading towards a direction where the "soft patch" becomes less of a concern to the FOMC.