Business

The headline jobs number was certainly good, beating expectations and well higher than last month's disappointing (and upward revised) 182K print. However, a quick look below the headline reveals an amazing statistic: while we already noted that average hourly earnings posted only their first decline since December 2014, and just the 6th in the past decade, declining by -0.1%, what is the real surprise is that average weekly hours worked also dropped substantially by 0.2 from 34.6 to 34.4.

The immediate kneejerk rip in stocks (and bond yields) and dip in gold on the "good" jobs headline rapidly faded as the reality of ugly wage data seeped out. Crude is now notably lower, gold higher, stocks lower, and bond yields rallying back...

Initial rip then dip...

And gold is now soaring back...

As stocks tumble...

If bulls were expecting a February payrolls miss, they did not get it when moments ago the BLS reported that nonfarm payrolls surged by 242K in the past month, smashing expectations of 195K, with the January and December prints both revised higher by 21K and 9K respectively. The unemployment rate at 4.9% printed unchanged from the prior month and as expected.

In half an hour, the BLS will report the February unemployment rate and payrolls number which is expected to print as follows:

Gold has surged another 4% this week to bring year to date gains to 20% in dollar terms, 19% in euro terms and 24% in sterling terms. We were interviewed by PickingAlpha.com yesterday afternoon and looked at what is currently driving gold prices higher in all currencies.