Ahead of today’s jobs report (which we previewed as being focused mostly on the unemployment rate), we said that the whisper was for a stronger report due to the mandatory political talking points for the White House taking credit for all those strikers coming back to work…
Whisper is stronger number due to impact of strikers returning to work and required political talking points
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 8, 2023
… and lo and behold, that’s precisely what happened, with the total number of job gains in November coming in at 199K, above last month’s 150K and, more importantly, well above the consensus forecast of 183K.
Of course, as has been the case every month this year, previous months’ data was revised lower, with September down by 35K from 297K to 262K and October remaining flat at 150K (the BLS is getting a little shy of all these downward revisions taking place the next month) and will instead be revised lower in January. So expect today’s “beat” to be revised to a miss next month… when it won’t matter.
Still, the number was solid especially when considering that the number of employed workers as counted by the Household survey surged by 747K to 161.969…
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