May Payrolls Drop To 13 Month Low But Come In Hotter Than Expected

Heading into today’s key payrolls print, we had a feeling that contrary to Wall Street’s generally cheerful expectations, the jobs number would be bad based on dismal real-time indicators (as described in “We Could See A Million Layoffs Or More” – Here Comes The Job Market Shock), and the latest Goldman macro data, and we… were off, because moments ago the BLS reported that in May the US added 390K jobs, which was a drop from last month’s upward revised 436K and the lowest since April 2021, but was well above the 320K expected (and once again made a mockery of the recent dismal ADP prints, which suggests that there is a very political component here).

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for March was revised down by 30,000, from +428,000 to +398,000, and the change for April was revised up by 8,000, from +428,000 to +436,000. With these revisions, employment in March and April combined is 22,000 lower than previously reported.

Developing