What's clear is that the 96,000 number was just noise, subject to revision. Honestly this sport of Romney in jumping all over individual monthly reports is a Fool's Errand as each individual report averages has a margin of error of 70,000 jobs. As June or July were much higher, we may later learn that August was in the 140,000 or 150,000 range as well.
Then too there were the ADP numbers that showed over 200,000 private sector jobs. At the time, the markets surged for over a 200 point gain in the Dow with a similar rise in the S&P, with the Nasdaq rising to its highest level since 2000.
You can debate which one is more accurate-in truth it probably depends. However, what's interesting is that the market did not give back the gains it got on Friday after hearing the lower BLS numbers. On Thursday, after hearing the ADP numbers there was some pretty bullish talk:
"There’s no ambiguity about the rally today—every economic data point we got was positive and the market liked Draghi’s comments,” said Brian Gendreau, market strategist at Cetera Financial Group. “We don’t know if this new program is going to succeed, but the ECB seems to be squarely in the camp of taking positive action.”
It's not all that often these days that you hear cautious market participants say things like "there's no ambiguity" about a rally.
Now Gallup has just released some very bullish numbers on consumer confidence:
"Between Aug. 26-28 and Sept. 5-7, the Gallup economic confidence index rose by 17 points -- from -33 to -16 -- a remarkable jump in just over a week."
"It's the highest level of economic confidence in the Gallup tracker since earlier this year when jobs were growing more quickly."
"The measure could be an outlier as there's little other evidence to suggest a spike in economic confidence. But if it's accurate, changing views on the economy could have a major impact on the election."
Indeed, I noted on Friday right after the numbers came out this from Gallup:
"U.S. consumer spending climbed to its highest level is nearly four years in August 2012 at the same time that job creation appears to be improving. Gallup's Job Creation Index rose to +19 in August, up from +17 in July, and the payroll company Automatic Data Processing Inc., reported job gains last month that beat the consensus expectations. Additionally, Gallup's unadjusted unemployment rate was down in August, although the adjusted rate rose. Still, there may be other factors involved, including back-to-school spending."
At the least there's more than enough to suspect that all the faux angst about Friday's report is way overdone. There is more than enough data to suggest a counter-narrative.
P.S. I call it faux angst as I don't believe for one second that Romney-Ryan give a shit that Americans are out of work and hurting. It's al just an attempt at political manipulation. If Ryan cared he should have passed the President's Job Bill. All the care about is defeating our President. Now they love Clinton but in the 90s it was the same with him.
P.S.S From what I see, a lot of Obama supporters were fired up by the convention. That speech, too, I'm more convinced was a work of genius depsite the media's attempt to quibble about it. I agree it was more understated than the rest of the convention but that was by design. He said what he needed to say.
In any case, I'm going to do some volunteer work for him tomorrow. If your interested check this website out
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