Labor

As noted earlier, Wall Street was completely clueless ahead of today's payroll, with most expecting a small positive print but two brave forecasters went so far as to predict that the recent hurricanes would result in a negative print, and sure enough, moments ago the BLS reported that in September, the US economy lost 33,000 hurricane distorted jobs, the first payrolls decline since September 2010.

Tomorrow's hurricane-affected September jobs report will be... confusing. That is the (lack of) consensus from Wall Street analysts, who expect an average print of 80,000 (down from the 3-month average of 185K), however with huge variance on either side, with 4 economists predicting a loss of jobs, three expecting a print higher than 150K and one optimistic forecaster going as high as 260,000.

The amusing breakdown by bank is as follows:

We harp on the massive, unsustainable, yet largely unnoticed, debt burdens of American cities, counties and states fairly regularly because, well, it's a frightening issue if you spend just a little time to understand the math and ultimate consequences.  Here is some of our recent posts on the topic:

A new study from Joe Nation of Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research entitled "Pension Math: Public Pension Spending and Service Crowd Out in California, 2003-2030," says that the devastating consequences of the ill-advised, Cadillac pensions doled out to America's public employees over the past several decades are only getting started. 

A new study of public pension returns by Cliffwater LLC has found that the median U.S. state pension plan returned just 5.9% annually over the 10 years ended June 30, 2016.  Meanwhile, as Pension and Investments notes, the top performing state pension, the $15.6 billion Oklahoma Teachers' Retirement System, was the only fund that managed to eek out a return over 7% during the same period.