Well, so much for that 200K+ whisper number for December payrolls, and it appears that Goldman’s warning that winter storms in the last month of the year would depress jobs was spot on after moments ago the BLS reported that December payrolls tumbled from an upward revised 252K in November (from 228K) to only 148K, a 3-sigma miss to expectations of 190K, and the lowest print since July.
The December payrolls number was below all but one sellside estimate:
Not helping the huge December miss were prior month revisions, with the change in total payrolls for October revised down from +244,000 to +211,000, while and the change for November was revised up from +228,000 to +252,000. Net, revised gains in October and November combined were 9,000 less than previously reported. After revisions, job gains have averaged 204,000 over the last 3 months.
Elsewhere, the Dec. unemployment rate came in as expected, at 4.1%, same as November, while U6 unemployment rose a fraction to 8.1% from 8.0%.
via RSS http://ift.tt/2m18adr Tyler Durden