QUICK QUILL — The JOLTS report signaled wage disinflation and raised the flag for an unemployment rate shock in the current quarter. The stability of the unemployment rate’s range has also been arrested as evidenced in August’s fresh layoff wave. Take the over on this Friday’s expected 3.5% read on the unemployment rate.
TAKEAWAYS
- At 8.827 million, July Job Openings came in below every Bloomberg estimate and entered bear market territory, down -22.4% YoY; meanwhile, at 2.5%, private sector Quits returned to their February 2020 level, which should put additional downward pressure on supercore
- Merging JOLTS openings with Conference Board’s Help Wanted Index, declines of -20% YoY or more have preceded jumps in the unemployment rate 40 out of 40 times since 1950; the -0.86 correlation between the two further flags a looming unemployment rate shock
- Conference Board Jobs Hard to Get, which has a 0.88 correlation with unemployment since 1967, jumped to a 28-month high of 14.1% in August; at the same time, DailyJobCuts.com has tallied 26,640 layoffs in August vs. July’s 14,095, with closures at a 6-month high of 246