Worst Employment Reports and Worst Reactions to Employment Reports
Friday, June 4, 2010 at 11:36AM A few days ago we highlighted how economists were expecting this to be the best jobs report since 1983 (even though more than half were expected to come from temporary census jobs). The consensus economist estimate of 536,000 was laughed at this morning by the actual number that came in at +431,000. The real disappointment didn't come from the overall miss, but from the very weak private sector jobs number. Census workers accounted for 411,000 of the 431,000 jobs added! That's how a reading of +431k gets labeled as awful, and rightfully so.
From our Economic Indicator Database available to Premium Plus subscribers, below we highlight the biggest misses versus expectations in jobs reports since 1998. When comparing actual versus estimates, today's miss of 105,000 jobs ranks as the 21st worst.
The table of worst jobs reports also highlights the change in the S&P 500 on the day of the report. Today's current decline of 2.08% would be the second worst of the days where jobs missed by 100,000 or more. The average change for the S&P 500 on all 100k miss days has actually been positive at 0.23%, so today's action is an outlier even though it's counterintuitive.
We also sorted our Economic Indicator Database for the worst market reactions to the non-farm payrolls report since 1998. At its current intraday level, the S&P 500's decline of 2.08% would rank as the 11th worst. The worst day for the S&P 500 on a jobs report came two years ago on June 6th, 2008 when the index declined 3.09%. The jobs report that day came in at -49,000 versus an estimate of -60,000.
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Reader Comments (2)
You might want to adjust the SP500 moves by factoring the implied volatility that preceded the jobs release data.
-3.44%
S&P 500 @ 900 Is fair value . 15 times $60 earnings