Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Manufacturing, employment reports beat expectations, but not in a good way #p2 #tcot


Good economic news in short supply.
 
It's already been a terrible week for economic news, and the worst may be yet to come when the Department of Labor's monthly jobs report is released Friday. Today's news about manufacturing from the Institute for Supply Management and about private-sector employment from ADP Employment Services have one thing in common with other recent reports: They missed expectations. And not in a good way.

Way below expectations in the case of ADP. It reported that non-farm payroll jobs rose a meager 38,000 in May. That's compared with 177,000 ADP reported for April. The numbers comes from ADP payroll data for 340,000 business establishments. Of note in the report is that construction employment fell by 8000 jobs in May, reversing a gain in April. Since the recession began in December 2007, construction jobs have decreased 2,124,000, according to ADP's measures.

As Tuesday's Case Shiller report on still-falling housing prices clearly showed, the drop in construction jobs isn't going to be repaired any time soon. And, as Bill McBride says, the situation is worse than the media have reported. There are simply too many houses on the market, sales are slow and very low levels of new residential building are occurring. Usually, housing construction is a key factor in boosting economic recovery.

"This [ADP report] only adds fuel to the argument that the slowdown story is here in the U.S.," said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York.

"This is exactly what we do not want when other significant data shows things are slowing down as well."

rest at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/01/981116/-Manufacturing,-employment-reports-beat-expectations,-but-not-in-a-good-way

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