November Jobs Report Thread

There is both good news and bad news buried in the report.

Most often, too much attention is paid to the headline month on month numbers.

1)

2) In year over year terms, total nonfarm payrolls did not increase for the first time since the pandemic. Generally, this is a negative.
3) Under the hood, most of the decline was in the government sector so it makes more sense to look at private payrolls in this context.
4) Private payroll growth continues to increase but the gains are clearly slowing down - this is to be expected.
5) The troubling part of the report was the labor force participation rate which remains stubbornly low.

As @R_Perli highlighted, if the LFPR does not increase back to pre-COVID levels, we're going to struggle with weaker trend potential growth.

https://t.co/zw7fCZ2gfY
6) These long-term trends are already quite troubling.
7) Similarly, the employment to population ratio is a disaster and will also weigh on both wage inflation and trend potential growth.

This is a structural issue and not totally related to demographics either.
8) Permanent job losses are still increasing, but slower which is good.
9) The growth rate in weekly hours for the manufacturing sector dipped slightly. Still a positive trend.
10) Coupled with a rising growth rate in the ISM new orders to inventory spread, manufacturing likely has legs through the new year and possibly through Q1.
11) Like @GreekFire23 wrote, after a major recession we get a snapback (Zarnowitz Rule) but growth quickly reverts to trend after the rebound.

https://t.co/Lxn4g7VyLh
12) The problem is that our trend is not good & getting worse

We have a growth upturn at the moment so we can ignore the LT trend, but only temporarily.

End.
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More from Economy

On Jan 6, 2021, the always stellar Mr @deepakshenoy tweeted, this:

https://t.co/fa3GX9VnW0

Innocuous 1 sentence, but its a full economic theory at play.
Let me break it down for you. (1/n)


On September 30, 2020, I wrote an article for @CFASocietyIndia where I explained that RBI is all set to lose its ability to set interest rates if it continues to fiddle with the exchange rate (2/n)

What do I mean, "fiddle with the exchange rate"?

In essence, if RBI opts and continues to manage exchange rate, then that is "fiddling with the exchange rate"

RBI has done that in the past and has restarted it in 2020 - very explicitly. (3/n)

First in March 2020, it opened a Dollar/INR swap of $2B with far leg to be unwound in September 2020.

Implying INR will be bought from the open markets in order to prevent INR from falling vis a vis USD (4/n)

The Second aspect is now, that dollar inflow is happening, and the forex reserves swelled -> implying the rupee is appreciating, RBI again intervened from September, by selling INR in spot markets. (5/n)
https://t.co/9kpWP7ovyM
1/ Trend Factor: Any Economic Gains from Using Information over Investment Horizons? (Han, Zhou, Zhu)

"A trend factor using multiple time lengths outperforms ST reversal, momentum, and LT reversal, which are based on the three price trends separately."

https://t.co/udkvsdw2Lz


2/ This resembles combining multiple measures of ST reversal, momentum, and LT reversal (forecasts determined by walking forward rather than using signs from the full sample).

Unlike normal moving average signals, these are *cross-sectional.* More below:
https://t.co/wkIFLg9jtK


3/ Unsurprisingly, the Trend factor formed by this approach outperforms benchmarks in terms of both Sharpe ratio and tail metrics. It's combining momentum with two factors that are negatively correlated to it AND using multiple specifications.

More here:
https://t.co/x8Tloz3iyL


4/ "Average return and volatility of the trend factor are both higher in recession periods. However, the Sharpe ratio is virtually the same.

"Interestingly, all of the factors still have positive average returns.

"Momentum experiences the greatest increase in volatility."


5/ "In terms of maximum drawdown and the Calmar ratio, the trend factor performs the best.

"The trend factor is correlated with the short-term reversal factor (35%), long-term reversal factor (14%), and the market (20%) but is virtually uncorrelated with the momentum factor."

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