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Mortgage News You Can Use US Jan payrolls and unemployment
NEW YORK, Feb 6 (Reuters) - The following are comments from debt and currency market analysts on Friday after the U.S. Labor Department reported January non-farm payrolls rose a less than expected 112,000 from a revised 16,000 in December. The pool of available workers shrank by 0.5 percent, while average hourly earnings rose 0.1 percent, while the unemployment rate slipped to 5.6 percent in January from 5.7 percent. AMY CREWS CUTTS, DEPUTY CHIEF ECONOMIST, FREDDIE MAC, MCLEAN, VIRGINIA: "It is still low relative to expectations. December was lower than expected and so was January. "The economy is still not generating jobs as quickly as economists believe it should be. "The one good sign is that the unemployment rate has been falling steadily for the last several months." JOHN MCCARTHY, DIRECTOR OF FOREIGN EXCHANGE AND SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ING CAPITAL MARKETS, NEW YORK: "Obviously the numbers came in a bit disappointing. We saw estimates ranging from 150,000 to 100,000 so there was a variance in expectations, and these numbers were in the low end of expectations. The revision of last month were minimal. "And we saw the euro jump and the dollar/yen fall. Relative to expectations (the figures) are disappointing but they are better than the previous month. The dollar will trade with a downward bias today, but on the other hand we have the G7 this weekend. So we may already have traversed the entire range." DOUGLAS DUNCAN, CHIEF ECONOMIST, MORTGAGE BANKERS ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.: "The January number of 112,000 is still below consensus. The trend is for the addition of jobs. But it is still not at the level people had expected. "But, it does show momentum (in payroll jobs) is building." DANIEL TENENGAUZER, VICE-PRESIDENT FOR FOREIGN EXCHANGE, LEHMAN BROTHERS, NEW YORK: "The payrolls number was well below market expectations and confirms the jobs market in the U.S. is weak. There was an upward revision to last month but it is not particularly meaningful. We have seen a fall in the dollar as this is a clearly negative for the economic outlook." STEVEN GALLAGHER, ECONOMIST, SG COWEN SECURITIES, NEW YORK: "Non-farm payrolls continues to be a disappointment. There's a couple of weakness, like temporary help which is down. In fact, it's not so much weakness but lack of real hiring." "It's a step in the right direction but we're far from where we need to be to get excited or worried about the Fed (raising rates). June or later is our call but later is probably the focus on the market, and the Treasury market is rallying." DAVID WYSS, CHIEF ECONOMIST, STANDARD & POOR'S, NEW YORK: "I was expecting 150,000 new jobs, so this is a little on the soft side but at least it's better than 1,000. The unemployment rate is back down to 5.6 percent, which is its historical average. "This shows the disagreement between the household and payroll employment numbers. Over the longer run, the factor causing this is the growth of the contract work force. "We're seeing the same things that we have seen for a while: fairly strong economic growth with little employment growth." STEVEN WOOD, CHIEF ECONOMIST, INSIGHT ECONOMICS, DANVILLE, CALIFORNIA: "It's just flat out disappointing. We're just not creating many jobs. I think it's very much a productivity story. Productivity is growing very quickly. The economy is growing quickly, but if it's all being made up by productivity, then you're not going to get the jobs. If you don't get the employment gains, you have an economic recovery that's not going to sustain itself. People are getting more worried about the sustainability. You're not getting the job creation and the income creation." MARK VITNER, SENIOR ECONOMIST, WACHOVIA SECURITIES, CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA: "I'm a liitle disappointed, I thought we were going to see a much stronger number. A lot of the jobs came from retailing which is really just and accounting twist from the fact we didn't add as many retail jobs in December. "We are seeing some improvement in manufacturing but we're still losing jobs in labor-intensive parts of the manufacturing sector. "We were expecting the first rate rise in June, but right now I think we're going to push it out till after the presidential elections." RICK EGELTON, DEPUTY CHIEF ECONOMIST, BMO FINANCIAL GROUP, TORONTO: "The payrolls increase was a little weaker than expected. We were looking for a number in the 150,000 range. But it was not that bad, and there were moderate upward revisions to November and December as well. "The labor market is improving but at a lower pace than what we are seeing in the real economy. These numbers will not change the Fed's thinking. The Fed is on hold for the time being. We're still thinking they will tighten in late summer." RAM BHAGAVATULA, CHIEF ECONOMIST, ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND, NEW YORK: "They're strong numbers. The headline number looks weaker than the market was hoping for but the workweek is up, aggregate hours are up, it's a strong number. We are looking for 5 percent GDP growth in the first quarter and this surely is going to make that happen." GARY THAYER, CHIEF ECONOMIST, A.G. EDWARDS & SONS, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: "They're an improvement, though a little bit lower than the consensus expectations. There were upward revisions in November and December. Overall, the numbers are looking more in line with other labor market indicators, showing that the labor sector is getting better. "Bond prices are up. The 'whisper number' was much higher -- above consensus. There was some thought, particularly after Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke's speech yesterday, that employment growth would pick up in the near future. So people began to think that this might be the month when that happened. But instead, the job growth numbers came in on the soft side." KURT KARL, U.S. CHIEF ECONOMIST, SWISS RE, NEW YORK: "The numbers look pretty well distributed but manufacturing is still disappointing. I expects that by March there will be positive gains for manufacturing jobs. It's an okay report, not as strong as the market was expected." Back to Original Article: Mortgage News You Can Use
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