Breakfast Bites - First Jobs Friday of 2024

Rise and shine everyone.

It’s Jobs Friday. The Dec 2023 employment report is set to be released today at 8:30 am ET. It’s getting more confusing to tell whether the market sees a strong jobs report as good news or bad news. I suppose it depends on the flavor of the month.

Expectations are for lower job creation in December compared to November and for the unemployment rate to tick up marginally. While the market continues to remain tight, we’re seeing some softening in the numbers. Again, looking at the jobs report at first glance is a challenge because of all the revisions we had last year.

Nevertheless, here are the estimates from the various banks.

At this level though, the total tally for job increases in the US in 2023 is about 2.7 million, which is a solid number. With the way the Fed hiked last year, it’s unbelievable that the unemployment rate for 2023 ends up below 4%.

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