00:00Fitting the narrative so far, it looks like there are a lot fewer jobs available right now,
00:046,542,000 in December. That's down from 7,146,000 in November. The job openings rate falls to 3.9%
00:15from 4.3%. In terms of the layoffs level, it's up to 1,672,000 from 1,701,000. But the layoffs
00:27rate doesn't change 1.1%. And the quits rate doesn't change at 2%. But more people laid off
00:33in December. Of course, the challenger numbers are from January. And we're also looking at the
00:38jobless claims numbers from last week that may, may not have been affected by weather. But kind
00:44of what it comes down to is this, the headlines that we have seen over the past week have all
00:49been negative for jobs. You look at ADP was weaker than anticipated. The jobless claims numbers
00:57rise more than anticipated. Challenger, the most since 2009. And then the Revelio Labs,
01:04which is a new one that people have been watching, said non-farm jobs in January fell by 13,000. So
01:10it is not a good news picture going into the jobs report, which is next Wednesday.
01:16It would seem awful. I'm trying to square the circle because the challenger numbers and Julia
01:22Fanzaris over at BN writing that this is the worst, that was the worst month for layoffs and for hiring
01:28since 2009. And for those of our viewers who are too young, that was the great financial crisis. So
01:33it was very bad then. And the continuing claims, which is a number that, you know, Ed Hyman and all
01:41these economic luminaries tell me is the most reliable piece of economic data that we get,
01:46and most regular, it's only 231,000. That's not very much, even though I know it's a climb of 22,000
01:53over the previous number. So how do those two things make sense together? Well, the caveats to
02:00both of those are challenger is job cut announcements. And often they don't follow through. And also a lot
02:06of it could be attrition as opposed to jobs actually being eliminated. But we do know that Amazon laid off
02:1216,000 people and UPS 30,000 people. And those announcements went in there. Announced they would.
02:18And so those contributed to the big numbers. The big thing about the claims numbers, if you were
02:25laid off prior to a couple of weeks ago, and then two weeks ago, we're going to go in and file,
02:31and the weather was so bad you didn't that you filed last week, that could have boosted that.
02:34But then you look at the Reveglio numbers, you look at the ADP numbers, and they're telling
02:38somewhat the same story that we're seeing very weak job creation. So we've got to wait
02:43until Jobs Wednesday to find out where we were in January.
Comments