by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
Stunning isn’t quite the right word.
Obviously, if you look at the price of certain stocks, someone had the numbers a couple of days ago and they traded it. The volume/price spikes were obvious at the time — the reason, not so much.
Note a few facts from the internals:
- This is the largest single-month household-survey, unadjusted increase I have in my data set going back to 1999. +4m, more or less.
- Half came out of the NILF (not in labor force) number. In 08/09 those adds were “sticky”; this time, not so much.
- The total permanent loss of jobs, by the data, is ~2m. That is, if this data is to be believed, more than 90% of the losses in March and April were temporary. My informal view (given businesses forced-closed and not reopening) is that this is wildly optimistic but it’s what the data represents today. Of course that classification is inherently speculative but it’s what the survey folks are being told.
The market of course loves this. And will for a while too. The numbers came out while I was on Stocks-n-Jocks; head on over for a listen from their archives if you’d like.