Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / Are We Past “Strong” Jobs Data Now? | S3 E119 | 02-05-26

Transcript

Are We Past “Strong” Jobs Data Now? | S3 E119 | 02-05-26 · Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update

• 0:00
  Megan Horneman: The markets don't like the economic data that we got today, specifically surrounding the labor market.
• 0:05
  Megan Horneman: It's Thursday, February the 5th, and this is Markets with Megan.
• 0:08
  Megan Horneman: If you like this podcast, subscribe.
• 0:10
  Megan Horneman: You can hit the alarm bell, share it with your friends, family, or colleagues.
• 0:14
  Megan Horneman: But we're here today to talk about the economic data that was released this morning and what it showed us on the progression we're seeing in the labor market.
• 0:23
  Megan Horneman: And we knew coming into this year the labor market was weak, but what we what we're seeing is that the data may be may be a precursor to what we see next week when we get the jobs report.
• 0:33
  Megan Horneman: And it may not be as favorable as we saw the last time with the rate uh ticking lower.
• 0:39
  Megan Horneman: But let's dig into the data.
• 0:40
  Megan Horneman: If you look at the Jolts report that we got today, this was for the month of December.
• 0:45
  Megan Horneman: So this is ending the year last year.
• 0:47
  Megan Horneman: We saw that there were six and a half million job openings.
• 0:52
  Megan Horneman: That was the weakest amount of job openings that we've seen since September of 2020.
• 0:57
  Megan Horneman: So really coming out of the depths of the pandemic.
• 1:00
  Megan Horneman: There are at this time in the month of December, there were 7.5 million unemployed Americans.
• 1:07
  Megan Horneman: So when you look at that difference, this is the widest dispersion or the most amount of people that are unemployed compared to job openings that we've seen since March of 2021.
• 1:19
  Megan Horneman: So all of that COVID structural damage from the labor market has reversed itself now.
• 1:25
  Megan Horneman: And now we are seeing more people unemployed than job postings.
• 1:29
  Megan Horneman: But what we are seeing also is that people are holding on to their jobs longer.
• 1:33
  Megan Horneman: The quits rate or those that are leaving their job voluntarily without having another job, that skyrocketed in the aftermath of the pandemic as people decided to whether it's leave the labor force or quit their job in search of a new one because there were so many good job prospects.
• 1:50
  Megan Horneman: But what we're seeing is that quits rate stayed unchanged at 2%.
• 1:54
  Megan Horneman: The historical average is 1.9.
• 1:57
  Megan Horneman: So we're getting back into some equilibrium here.
• 2:00
  Megan Horneman: These things should help ease some of the wage pressures that we had in the years after the pandemic.
• 2:06
  Megan Horneman: Now, some of the other things that we got information on today was the Challenger Gray and Christmas report.
• 2:12
  Megan Horneman: This is a report that shows the job layoffs that were announced publicly disclosed for the month.
• 2:21
  Megan Horneman: And what we saw in the month of January that it was the worst January for layoffs since 2009.
• 2:27
  Megan Horneman: And that's a bit concerning because that was the depths of the great financial crisis.
• 2:32
  Megan Horneman: Job layoffs rose one in a hundred 118% on a year-over-year basis.
• 2:38
  Megan Horneman: The hiring intentions that are also reported in this report were also the worst on record.
• 2:44
  Megan Horneman: Now, looking at those layoffs, though, about half of them were tied to three companies.
• 2:48
  Megan Horneman: That was Amazon, UPS, and Dow.
• 2:51
  Megan Horneman: There were some other areas, Nike, for example, uh Peloton, they also announced some layoffs.
• 2:56
  Megan Horneman: But again, a lot of that was higher, was had to do with those three companies.
• 3:01
  Megan Horneman: Now we also received the weekly jobless claims report, and that was for the week ending January 31st.
• 3:08
  Megan Horneman: And we saw that they jumped to an eight-week high.
• 3:11
  Megan Horneman: Now, again, concerning, especially since it piled on the top of two other disappointing jobs reports.
• 3:16
  Megan Horneman: But let's also keep in mind that there is the report of a lot of disruptions because of weather that we have had some very extreme weather conditions across the United States, which may have impacted this report.
• 3:28
  Megan Horneman: That's all we have today.
• 3:30
  Megan Horneman: The markets definitely don't like these economic data.
• 3:33
  Megan Horneman: There's some other things going on in the market.
• 3:35
  Megan Horneman: We're seeing a sell-off again in Bitcoin, in the precious metals.
• 3:38
  Megan Horneman: This is impacting overall risk sentiment as well as these economic numbers.
• 3:44
  Megan Horneman: Thank you so much.
• 3:45
  Megan Horneman: And if you want a history of our podcast, you go to marketswithmegan.fm.
• 3:48
  Megan Horneman: Thank you.