{"id":485,"date":"2010-09-06T15:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-06T19:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intuitiveinvestor.com\/web\/?p=485"},"modified":"2018-08-17T14:21:45","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T18:21:45","slug":"jobs-jobs-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2010\/09\/06\/jobs-jobs-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Jobs? jobs. jobs!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Department of Labor statistics released Friday show that the aggregate U.S. economy shed 54,000 jobs in August.\u00a0 Massively contributing to the negative number were the 114,000 census workers whose temporary jobs went bye-bye.\u00a0 What that means of course is that the private sector added jobs.\u00a0 How else to account for the 60,000 jobs discrepancy?\u00a0 How many jobs were added by business?\u00a0 67,000!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"><strong>Analysis:<\/strong> What I find amazing in these statistics is that last month when the jobs number came out I wrote about the fact that the private sector had added jobs then, too.\u00a0 However, equity investors focused on the overall jobs lost.\u00a0 On Friday, however, those trading focused on the same math that I had last month: private sector jobs growth.\u00a0 Go figure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Yes, it is a good sign that the private sector is\u00a0continuing to add jobs.\u00a0 However, the economy needs <strong>net gains<\/strong> in jobs across sectors if it is to keep its head above water and not dip into recession&#8217;s watery depths again.\u00a0 Not only that, but the private sector&#8217;s job growth was also lower in August than in July.\u00a0 So this is yet another reason to be mystified by the positive market gains on Friday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">I have said it before and I will reiterate it now: two data points do not make a trend, they make a line.\u00a0 You need three data points at least in order to recognize, at a minimum, a trend.\u00a0 Yes, the last two jobs reports are strongly negative due to census jobs lost, but those people still need new work.\u00a0 That means the economy has to absorb their employment needs at some point.\u00a0 And that isn&#8217;t happening right now.\u00a0 In fact, the last two data points for the private sector jobs growth have a negative slope.\u00a0 So the rate of change (first derivative for you calculus geeks) is negative.\u00a0 Not a good sign either.\u00a0 What is badly needed is at least three consecutive months of <em>total<\/em> jobs growth and where the rate of change is positive, or at least flat.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"><strong>Importance grade:<\/strong> 10; this remains the single most important data point in the world of investing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Department of Labor statistics released Friday show that the aggregate U.S. economy shed 54,000 jobs in August.\u00a0 Massively contributing to the negative number were the 114,000 census workers whose temporary jobs went bye-bye.\u00a0 What that means of course is that the private sector added jobs.\u00a0 How else to account for the 60,000 jobs discrepancy?\u00a0 How [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}