Commentary
The latest released U.S. nonfarm payrolls continue on the upside to the surprise of the market, with a month-on-month (MoM) increase of 253,000 jobs beating expectations of 180,000 and the previous month’s 165,000. Despite the trend has been declining from 400,000 at the beginning of the year to over 200,000, which is not low by any standard. During the 2010s, the normal boom years, the stable average was 200,000, but fluctuated between 100,000 and 300,000. It seems very hard to imagine how a recession could be on the brink despite the yield curve having a firm prediction to it.
To resolve this anomaly, we could simply review the past experience with historical data. The nonfarm payrolls record goes back to the late 1930s, but there is no harm in focusing on the post-war period. The accompanying chart shows the payrolls trend around the beginning of ten recessions, excluding the COVID-19 one in 2020 (where that recession was highly artificial due to lockdowns). Along the time axis, “0” refers to the beginning month of a recession defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a neighbouring four months before and after are shown….