Though we were on holiday last Friday, the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
did not take Good Friday off, reporting the strongest monthly jobs numbers in seven months: 916K new jobs were created in March, more than 25% higher than the consensus estimate of 675K and almost doubling the 468K new jobs added in February 2021 — which itself was up massively from the 379K originally reported. The Unemployment Rate remained steady at 6.0%, which revised down 20 basis points from the original report.
Once again, Leisure & Hospitality led the way with 280K new hires, with 176K of those coming from food service and drinking establishments. Overall, this sector is still down 18.5% from February 2020 (last year) totals, which is good news: this line of work still has room to add new jobs as the Great Reopening continues. Construction added a whopping 110K new positions, with Manufacturing a respectable +53K. Professional & Business Services brought in 66K last month.
Labor Force Participation was up only a sleepy 10 basis points to 61.5%; this is still on the weak side, and notably down from the 63.3% a year and a month ago. Again, this is good: plenty of slack yet to be pulled in the labor market. Average Hourly Earnings actually fell to -0.1%, a reverse of the +0.1% expected and the downwardly revised +0.1% from February. No fewer than 43.4% of total U.S. unemployed — 4.2 million people — are of the long-term variety, up from 3.1 million in Feb. 2020.
Today after the opening bell, we’ll get new figures from
Markit Services PMI
and
ISM Services
, coming off reads of 60.0 and 55.3%, respectively, the previous month. Last week, PMI Manufacturing was a touch light of expectations at 59.1, while ISM zoomed up 3% over expectations to 64.7% and from 60.8% the previous month. Will we see a similar discrepancy between PMI and ISM numbers on the Services side? We’ll also get a look at February factory orders, expected +0.3%.
Tesla
TSLA
shares are up 7% in today’s pre-market after clobbering Q1 deliveries expectations: 184,800 new Tesla’s rolled off the assembly line last quarter, well ahead of the 172K expected. The global electric vehicle (EV) leader now expects 831K deliveries for full-year 2021, +40% year over year. We know the EV market is starting to get more crowded after about a decade-long head start for Tesla, but it will take some time for companies like
General Motors
GM
to catch up with 2023 sales of electric Hum-Vs.
The S&P 500 sits at a new record high. The Dow appears set to open +250 points to start a new trading week. The Nasdaq is +100 points itself at this hour. Stimulus checks at the start of impacting the economy, with a potential giant infrastructure program perhaps being passed through the federal government shortly and Q1 earnings season around the corner (which will start a period of big year-over-year comps), not to mention a continued high Covid vaccination rate, is bringing the positive sentiment to morning trading.
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