Investors will be looking at the U.S. federal government’s official jobs number, due out this morning, to gauge whether the Trump Administration is helping or hurting the economy.
Most economists argue that President Trump’s tariff policy will hurt the economy by raising the price of anything Americans need to import and by moving some supply chains to the U.S., where costs are higher and manufacturing is less efficient.
But inflation and the unemployment rate have barely budged, and the hard data so far shows little damage. In fact, businesses over-ordering from overseas in an attempt to front-run the tariff deadline may have increased economic activity in the first half.
Nonetheless, the federal government has cut jobs, there have been mass layoffs at a number of companies — Microsoft most recently. The ADP private payroll report showed a 33,000 reduction in jobs for June.
Pantheon Macroeconomics analysts Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen think the ADP number is garbage.
“ADP’s forecasting track record is dire,” they said in a note seen by Fortune. “ADP underestimated the initial estimate of private payrolls by just over 100K in both April and May, and the size of these misses is far from unusual. … ADP suggests that employment in the manufacturing, distribution, and construction sectors, which currently face big headwinds from the tariff impact and ongoing downturn in homebuilding, all grew strongly in June. But the forecasting track record of the ADP’s sector employment estimates is just as unreliable as its headline numbers. … we’re inclined to ignore it.”
The Pantheon team is also worried about private residential construction, which declined 6.7% year-over-year in May.
Pantheon is estimating a 100,000 increase in non-farm payrolls. Goldman Sachs’ prediction is 85,000. Consensus is 110,000.
“Big data indicators were soft, we estimate the termination of Temporary Protected Status for approximately 350k Venezuelan migrants in mid-May will impose a 25k drag, and we expect a 15k decline in federal government payrolls. We estimate that the unemployment rate edged up to 4.3% on a rounded basis,” Jan Hatzius’s team at Goldman told clients.
UBS also thinks the number might be low.
“There is a hint today’s report may be weak,” Paul Donovan said. “US presidents normally see the data the night before release. Last night, US President Trump issued a social media post calling for Federal Reserve Chair Powell to resign. Policy uncertainty and the largest tax increase in modern times are more likely to damage the labor market than Fed policy, but the post might signal weaker data.”
Stock traders usually like it when unemployment increases because when companies shed workers, they shed costs too, and that shows up on the bottom line as increased earnings per share.
S&P 500 futures are holding up this morning and investors took the index to a new all-time high yesterday. JPMorgan’s Emma Wu and team say retail traders came back into the market in the last couple of weeks.
Put all those clues together—ADP’s low number, weak indicators in the data, Trump trying to blame Powell for everything, and retail traders buying up the market—and it suggests that investors are betting today’s jobs number will be grim.
Of course, if they are all wrong, then expect volatility in the markets today as investors eat a big slice of crow pie and Trump takes a loud victory lap.
Here’s a snapshot of the action prior to the opening bell in New York:
- S&P futures were marginally up this morning
- The S&P 500 his a new high, 6,227.42.
- Markets in Europe and the UK were trending up in early trading.
- Nasdaq Composite was up nearly 1%.
- Dow Jones was flat.
- South Korea’s Kospi was up 1.34% this morning.
- China’s CSI 300 Index was up 0.62%.
- Bitcoin is at $109K.
- Japan’s Nikkei 225 is flat.
