Labor

The US economy added 235,000 jobs in February, beating upward revised expectations of 200K, in-line with whisper expctations of 233K. Last month's report was upward revised from 227K to 238K with the net addition for the past two months coming to +9K.

Nonfarm private payrolls rose 227k up from 221k prior and above the estimate of 215k. Manufacturing payrolls rose 28k after rising 11k in the prior month; this also beat the +10k consensus estimate.

Following Wednesday's blowout ADP report, which printed some 40K jobs higher than the highest estimate, the only possibility for tomorrow's nonfarm payroll report, the last major economic data point before the Fed's March 15th rate hike announcement, is to disappoint, especially in terms of wages (which in light of the recent downward revision of Q1 GDP by the Atlanta Fed to 1.2% is not out of the question). That possibility, however, is slim to none if one looks at Wall Street's forecasts, where virtually every sellside analyst boosted their NFP estimate in the hours after the ADP number.

Job creation has been a key focus of the Trump administration which has blamed outsourcing to lower cost countries like Mexico and China for the stagnant wages of the middle-class working folks of America's Midwest.

Dear Bernie Sanders, it is our great pleasure to introduce to you, "Flippy", the burger-flipping robot that will soon replace all those fast food workers that you're working so vehemently to get fired via your efforts to introduce artificially high $15 per hour minimum wage rates.

American companies are riding high on the optimism created by President Trump’s election victory, adding a staggering 298,000 jobs to the U.S. economy during Trump’s first month in office. That monster figure comes from ADP, a payroll processing company that surveys the U.S. job market. The number far exceeded the 190,000 new jobs that economists were forecasting. President Trump tweeted a self-congratulatory note from the @POTUS account, referencing the long overdue “surging” growth in the jobs market and admitting the numbers are “much more than expected!“ U.S.