Labor

Following Jason Furman's "Baghdad Bob" appearance on CNBC this morning...

http://player.cnbc.com/p/gZWlPC/cnbc_global

It is President Obama's turn to gloat over the awesomeness of a 4.9% unemployment rate (never mind the fact that the gains during his presidency have gone to low-paying jobs). A job is a job after all... right?

With a stock market screaming for The Fed to back off (i.e. desperate for bad news), Obama better be careful not to paint too rosy a picture of his "Mission Accomplished" jobs recovery...

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Greece was fixed for a few months, when the so-called "anti-austerity" government of PM Tsipras which came to power just over a year ago did what each on its predecessors did by kicking the can and trading off what little sovereignty Greece has left for promises of more cash from Europe, but it is broken once again.

While we await the heavily massaged Initial Claims report from the DOL, moments ago we got the report of actual job layoff announcements tracked by Challenger Gray, and it was quite grim: in the first month of 2016, US-based employers reported 75,114 planned job cuts. Not only was this a 218% increase from the 23,622 in December, it was 42% higher than the same month a year ago, when employers announced 50,041 job cuts.

Following December's miraculous surge in employment (to the biggest improvement in a year), ADP Employment tumbled back a more "normal" 205k in January (stilll beating expectations of 195k). Services dominated (192k vs 13k for goods). Once again manufacturing disappoints with no change in employment as large business hiring slows notably.

ADP employment cyhange dropped notably but still beat expectations...

As ADP catches down to reality comiong from initial claims...

Change in Nonfarm Private Employment