Zero Hedge: As we previewed earlier, while consensus for today’s closely-watched payroll print was 725,000, a drop from last month’s 943K, the whisper expectation was for a number decidedly lower, with BMO underscoring this point noting that the August NFP print has a seasonal tendency to underwhelm estimates in August, doing so 75% of the time and beating 25% of the time by 18k and 47k, respectively, on average.
And sure enough, moments ago the BLS reported that in August just a paltry 235K jobs were added, far below the 725K expected below even the most pessimistic forecast; the number was not only a huge drop to last month’s upward revised 1.053MM but was the weakest print since January.
While we expect that the pundits will quickly blame the resurgence of covid in August, manifesting itself in zero jobs added in leisure and hospitality, with Bloomberg already busy spinning by saying that “the deceleration in hiring likely reflects both growing fears about the rapidly spreading delta variant of Covid-19 and difficulties filling vacant positions” the reality is that the US economy is rapidly slowing even as inflation continues to soar, positioning the US squarely for a stagflationary crash and putting the Fed’s tapering plans squarely in doubt.
Relative to expectations, the August print was ugly and represented a 4-sigma miss.
