Despite the Fed announcing it will begin tapering QE and a better than expected jobs report, gold rallied on Friday. In his podcast, Peter Schiff said this is sign sellers are exhausted.
October jobs came in at 531k, finally beating expectations with strength shown across the board. Furthermore, August and September were both revised upwards by over 100k. ‘
Perhaps even more surprising is the early reaction in the gold/silver market. More on this below.
Government policies – from shutdowns, to stimulus, to vaccine mandates – in response to the coronavirus pandemic have thrown the US economy completely out of whack. Looking at employment reveals just how messed up the economy has become.
The number of Americans quitting their jobs surged to a record high in August. According to the Labor Department Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report, job quits increased by 242,000 in August, pushing the total to a record 4.3 million. The quits rate surged to an all-time high of 2.9% in August from 2.7% in July.
We got the highly anticipated employment report on Friday. It came in far below expectations. But despite weak economic data, bond yields are rising, along with the price of just about everything. Meanwhile, a gold rally fizzled. Peter Schiff talked about it during his podcast, explaining just how badly the markets are misinterpreting the data. When you add up plunging bonds yields, strong oil, and weak economic data – that equals stagflation.
For the second month in a row, the jobs numbers in September came in well below expectations.
The Labor Department reported an increase of only 194,000 jobs, well below the estimated 500,000. The big miss was similar to August’s report.
Despite the unemployment rate ticking down to 4.8% from 5.2% and an upward August revision of 131,000 jobs, this is the weakest jobs report since January.
Both Janet Yellen and Joe Biden insisted “enhanced” unemployment benefits weren’t incentivizing people not to work. The numbers prove them wrong.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell spent most of his Jackson Hole speech continuing to try to convince everybody that inflation is transitory. As Friday Gold Wrap podcast host Mike Maharrey points out in this episode, whether it is or isn’t transitory, inflation is a real thing that has a real impact on real people. In this show, he also breaks the news on the August jobs numbers and discusses taper talk.
Gold and silver tanked after last Friday’s job report. But both metals have rallied a bit since the July CPI numbers came in right at expectations. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey looks a little deeper at jobs and CPI. Then he goes off-script and addresses some listener comments.
The BLS provides an employment picture of the US on the first Friday of every month. It estimates how many jobs were added or subtracted by sector. While some of the assumptions may be controversial (e.g. the birth/death model) and job numbers are prone to revisions, it remains the most widely anticipated statistic each month by the financial markets. Considering its popularity, the job numbers are heavily analyzed by many sources. This article uses visuals and historical data to provide greater insight and perspective.
Despite the addition of a better than expected 850,000 jobs in June, the unemployment rate ticked up to 5.9%, The anticipation was that it would drop to 5.6%. The media spun this as a fantastic jobs report, focusing on the headline number of jobs “created.” Peter Schiff talked about it in his podcast and said it was a weaker report than the headlines would suggest. And the really bad news is unemployment and prices are rising together.
