One month after the "catastrophic" August JOLTS report presaged the ugly September jobs report, which in turn prompted the Fed to cut a "jumbo" 50bps and spooked markets that a recession was imminent, moments ago the BLS reported that in September (as a reminder, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover report lags the Payrolls report, which is due on Friday, by one month), job openings unexpectedly jumped by 329K from an upward revised 7.711 million in July (up from 7.673 million) to 8.040 million in August, smashing the median estimate of 7.673 million, and coming above the highest Wall Street estimate.
The August print was the biggest monthly increase in job openings since last August!
What is remarkable is that this unexpected spike in job openings comes at a time when 3rd party metrics, such as the ISM Mfg employment index keeps sinking, dropping to 43.9 in September...
.... with the divergence between the JOLTS job openings and the ISM's percentage of respondents who believe employment will be lower, hitting a record high.
But what is even more remarkable - and laughable - is that the surge in job openings was primarily due to a time series which we pointed out last month indicated a collapse in the construction sector as the divergence between the job openings in the construction sector and actual construction jobs hit a record high. Well, after that particular print, the BLS decided to reverse the entire July loss and then some.
So how big was the August jump in construction job openings? Funny you ask: it was the biggest on record!
And while this number was clearly bullshit, coming at a time when new home starts is the lowest in years, the BLS decided to double down and reported that the balance of the job openings surge in August came from state and local government jobs, which surged by +78,000.
Because when in doubt how to goose the economy may as well as just make the deep state bigger.
Developing
