This morning at 8:30 edt, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Labor Department released its monthly Employment Situation report for July.
The numbers were strong.
The economy created +255,000 new jobs last month. Revisions to the prior two months’ data were also positive. The very weak May figures that caused financial markets alarm bells to ring were bumped up from +11,000 new positions to +24,000; the extra-strong June results edged higher to +292,000 from +287,000.
The effect of this ES report, I think, is to dissipate all the concern about incipient economic weakness that caused the Fed to refrain from raising interest rates at its last two meetings.
Although I’ve never been a big fan of financial companies, traditional banking operations, where interest margins on loans have been severely squeezed by years of easy monetary policy, would seem to me to be the biggest beneficiaries of this development. My guess is that the ES will also encourage the stock market to continue its drift away from mature cash-generative companies to more capital investment-intensive secular growth names.
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