Here are the lead paragraphs from the Employment Situation Summary released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 252,000 in December, and the unemployment rate declined to 5.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, construction, food services and drinking…
Click on picture to enlarge The past year has been a little bit rough on small caps, as they have underperformed against the SPY by almost 8% over the past 12 months. When looking back over the past few years, small caps haven’t lagged the S&P by that much in the past 5-years. Anything caused…
The US labor market posted another healthy increase last month, the government reports. Private-sector payrolls increased 240,000, a bit more than economists were forecasting (but slightly below The Capital Spectator’s median prediction). Although December’s advance was well below November’s increase (+345,000 for the private sector), today’s release still looks encouraging. Indeed, when you strip out the monthly noise…
Infosys Technologies Ltd (INFY – Analyst Report) reported third-quarter fiscal 2015 earnings per ADS from continuing operations of 46 cents, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 43 cents by 7% and the year-ago earnings of 41 cents by 12.2%. Quarterly results were primarily driven by strong volume growth as well as increased productivity and utilization. Further, the company…
The US grew 252k net jobs in December and the October-November series was revised up by 50k. The participation rate ticked down to match the cyclical low seen last September of 62.7% (from an upwardly revised 62.9% in November). This was behind the decline in the unemployment rate to 5.6%. Hourly earnings was an important…
Student loan debt is developing a deep penetrating consciousness this campaign season than in any other in memory and to that, we’d add that it’s about time. Americans’ outstanding loan debt has reached to an exceedingly high level of more than a trillion dollars this May, according to recent statistics provided by the Consumer Financial…
While headline exuberance over the payrolls print sparked a kneejerk higher in stocks, the record drop in earnings and the further drop in the labor force are leading bond yields and crude oil lower. Gold is modestly higher and the USDollar is rallying. Bonds and stocks have a different message… Though the curve steepened notably… As crude drops……
Wow, what a comeback! Maybe the 4th time will be a charm as we once again attempt to break that top line on the Russell (along with our other indexes). Of course, if you zoom out to a monthly chart, you’d see that this saw-tooth pattern can form what they call an “island top“, which is…
The economy added 252,000 jobs in December—down from 353,000 in November. With GDP growth slowing, prospects for jobless Americans are worsening. The unemployment rate fell to 5.6 percent, but only because so many working age Americans quit looking for work and are no longer counted in the official jobless tally. If the same percentage of…
