Initial Jobless Claims Soar

And the economic (downside) hits keep on coming: PMI, ISM, Non-Mfg ISM, ADP and now Initial claims - five out of five misses as the US economy slowly but surely joins the rest of the world in resuming its downward trajectory. Moments ago initial claims printed a whopping 385K, far above expectations of 353K, and far above the upwardly revised 357K (was 353K before). This was the biggest miss to expectations since November. Also, excluding the Sandy aberrations  this was the biggest two week surge in claims since April 2011.

Continuing claims also missed, printing at 3063K, above expectations of 3050K. Sure enough, the excuses begin: sequester, Easter (two states estimated which means actual number is likely even worse), weather (unclear if warm or hot), Cyprus, and generally, stuff... Just not the economy. Never the actual economy. Because it is unpossible that with $85 billion inject per month into the market economy, that things would be just getting worse and worse. Read more >>

ADP "Cancels" 365,000 Private Jobs Created In 2012

Today, our mockeries have been proven 100% spot on. The reason? A week ago, ADP announced that going forward it would coordinate with Moody's (yes, that Moody's), and especially its chief economist, SecTres hopeful (InTrade odds of actually attain that post: 0.00) Mark Zandi, to fudge adjust its data going forward. The data revision was supposed to be publicly disclosed tomorrow when the official October ADP number was released.

Well, just like today's Chicago PMI, and so many other data points recently, this too was released early. What the early release allowed us to promptly calculate is that using the historically revised numbers, and comparing those based on the original methodology, in 2012 alone, the US would have lost a whopping... 365,000 private jobs!

Putting thus number in context, according to the revised methodology, the US has generated only 1.172MM jobs in 2012 through September, or in other words, a statistical "fix" magically eliminated over 30% of what the market had previously expected were job gains, a number which the incumbent president has certain taken advantage of on more than one occasions while campaigning. Read more >>