Gavekal Capital: To Taper Or Not To Taper? Digging In To Today's Employment Report

Friday, December 6, 2013

To Taper Or Not To Taper? Digging In To Today's Employment Report

Today's employment and personal income and outlays reports may be strong enough for the Fed to begin tapering later this month. November employment came in at 203k jobs and the unemployment report dipped to a 5-year low (7%). The net revisions for September and October were also 8k higher. 

The US has now experienced four months of 200k+ employment growth and our national income proxy remained around 4%. 

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The household survey had the biggest one month change since January 2003. This helped drive the unemployment rate to 7% even has the participation rate (encouragingly) gained to 63%.

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Finally, the unemployment rate for men aged 20-24 also dropped to five-year low following an almost 2% drop. This group has had by far and away the highest unemployment rates since the 2008 so a decline here is good to see.

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