Gold & Silver Spike Higher On Huge Jobs Miss, US Economy Adds Just 266,000 Jobs In April
On the bright side, hiring in leisure and hospitality was notable...
(by Half Dollar) The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its latest Employment Situation Report, commonly called the "Jobs Report", for April, 2021.
The Jobs Report is going to start mattering again for many reasons, some of which are Armchair Quarterbackish in nature, such as influence of the unemployment rate and the labor force participation rate on the data-dependent Fed, but other abstract aspects of the report are likely to become more problematic for the statisticians moving forward as more and more companies report on a shortage of workers because of the government's lucrative incentives for individuals not to work.
Additionally, employers have been reporting anecdotally on the need to hike hourly wages, big time, just to entice applicants to accept jobs, with the point being that for many employers, bumping up hourly pay is difficult at best, if not downright impossible, and yet, without jacking up wages, it's nearly impossible for employers to find workers.
We also now have Biden, or someone, or some thing, micromanaging the job market through executive orders, such as his recent order increasing the minimum wage for contract workers to $15 per hour, and we also have Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Never-Another-Financial-Crisis-In-Our-Lifetimes Yellen assuring us that all of the inflation all around us, of which, wages are a type of inflation, is "transitory".
Regardless, the numbers are in, and according the the BLS, in April, 2021:
Total employment rose by: 266,000Unemployment rate little changed at: 6.1%Labor force participation rate little changed at 67.1%Average hourly earnings rose by: $0.21All things considered, and taken at face value, this latest jobs report will be considered a huge miss as many are expecting the US economy to be cranking out a million jobs per month, but hey, at the BLS says there were notable job gains in leisure and hospitality!
Gold & silver spiked higher when the report hit the tape:
Theoretically, a weak jobs recovery is bullish for gold & silver because it means the Fed and the Federal Government will continue to keep handing out free money like drunken sailors.
The question is, will potential employers hand out even more?
Developing...