US: Employment data will be hard to read – SocGen

In view of Kit Juckes, Research Analyst at Societe Generale, the US employment data will be hard to read, because they are recovering from, but not unaffected by, September’s hurricanes.

Key Quotes

“The last few months have seen a notable slowdown in the pace of job creation, and an uptick in wage growth. Both these trends should correct a bit. Lower-paid workers are less likely to be paid at all when a natural disaster strikes, which skews average wage growth up temporarily. But the underlying trend of payroll growth has been running at around 170k, so anything under 370k can be interpreted as showing a loss of momentum. A 2.7% AHE gain and a 200k NFP gain (our data) represent a bounce in jobs that is too small to tell us anything and a dip back in wage growth that would probably be neutral. A more sustained dollar gain may need something from the wage data to get the market more excited about Fed hikes in 2018/2019.”