By Hao Li: Subscribe to Hao's RSS feed
December 3, 2010 3:39 PM EST
What happened to the mini-rebound that started with the previous way-better-than-expected non-farm payrolls report?
While it would be premature to declare this mini-rebound -- or more precisely an acceleration in the pace of economic recovery -- to be over, November's shockingly bad jobs data puts a serious dent in that story.
Non-farm payrolls for November rose 39,000 versus the expected gain of 150,000. The private sector added 50,000 jobs while economists expected a gain of 160,000. The unemployment rate also edged up to 9.8 percent.
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Furthermore, the "no gain in average hourly earnings just as inflation pressures continue to build" is disappointing, said Peter Boockvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak.
Douglas Borthwick, at Stamford, Connecticut-based Faros Trading, said "no one expected the jobs number would be this poor."
Indeed, in Bloomberg's survey, the lowest forecast for private payrolls gain was 115,000, made by Stone & McCarthy Research Associates. Meanwhile, MF Global was the most optimistic with a forecast of 200,000.
Why did no one expect the data to be this bad?
"The markets [and economists, too] have gotten very excited over the past few weeks on the improving data," said Boockvar.
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