ADP said there were 169k private sector jobs shed in Nov, 19k more than expected but down from 195k (revised from 203k) in Oct and is the smallest amount of job losses since July ’08. The goods producing sector lost 88k jobs and the service sector shed 81k jobs with small businesses leading the decline. Within the goods producing sector, both manufacturing and construction saw jobs fall by 44k each. Construction jobs have now fallen by 1.721mm from the top in Jan ’07. The financial services sector lost 17k jobs and has now fallen for every month for 2 years. The estimate for Friday’s Payroll figure is -123k which does include the public sector. Bottom line, there remains no question that the pace of job losses has slowed but the path to healthy job gains I believe will still be unfortunately long and in order to begin to see a sustainable fall in the unemployment rate, we need to see 125k-150k job gains per month.
As measured by the weekly Investors Intelligence stock market sentiment data, the Dubai debt fears have only impacted people’s short term views, not their longer term ones. Those expecting a correction (longer term bulls expecting a short term pullback) rose to the highest since Sept ’97 BUT the total amount of bears (longer term bears) fell to the lowest since June ’03 at 16.7. Bulls fell a touch to 50. ABC confidence rose 2 pts to -45 led by the Buying Climate component which measures whether its a ‘good time to buy things they want or need.’ The amount of people that said it was totaled 28%, up 8 pts from the same time last yr and at the highest since March ’08 but still of course low but hopefully is an indicator for an improved holiday y/o/y. Dubai and Abu Dhabi CDS are lower for a 3rd day and global bond markets are down in response.
