More on the Jobs Numbers
by Tom on December 4, 2009
in Market Musings
Why the Jobs Numbers were too good to be true – and what it means for mortgage rates….
by Tom on December 4, 2009
in Market Musings, Mortgage Rates
My initial reaction this morning to the jobs report was that it just sounded too good to be true. Well, here’s some of why it might appear that really is true…..
As usual, CR over at Calculated Risk has a more in-depth analysis of it, but I’m going to hit on just one main point. Let me quote directly from his piece:
Retailers only hired 54.2 thousand workers (NSA) net in October. This is essentially the same as in 2008 (59.1 thousand NSA). However retailers hired 321.3 thousand workers in November (NSA), an increase from the 233.7 thousand last year.
Retailers hired 321,300 workers in November. How many of them do you think will remain gainfully employed with the same employer once the holiday season is over? Yeah, that’s what I thought too – maybe 10% if we’re lucky?
So, take that 321,300 and add it to the 11,000 jobs lost and you’ve got a significantly different number.
The market started out with a big movement up for stocks and a blood bath in the mortgage rate market. As I’m writing this, the stock market is currently down 11.65 points after having been up as much as 150 plus points. While we haven’t seen any actual rate changes for the better yet today, the trend is definitely reversing itself.
I’m going to quote a friend of mine (and fellow mortgage lender and fellow mortgage blogger), Dan Green because he’s the first one I’ve heard say this actual saying: “Mortgage rates take the elevator up and the stairs down.”
What does that mean? It means that they went up (we lost .125 to .25% this morning) quite quickly, but I expect that they will regain at least some of that over the next period of days/weeks.
In the mean time, if you want to get specific rate information for your situation, fill out the quote form on the side and I’ll let you know what we can do!
Thanks!
Tom Vanderwell
More on the Jobs Situation
by Tom on November 20, 2009
in Market Musings, house prices
CR reports more on the jobless situation. Until we can start turning the jobs situation around, we aren’t going to see a return to a decent housing market and we aren’t going to see a reduction in mortgage delinquencies and therefore any “relaxation” in mortgage underwriting guidelines for a while.
If anyone has the statistics, I’d like to see a state by state ranking in terms of joblessness and mortgage delinquencies. I’m venturing there would be a pretty strong link.
More as time allows,
Tom Vanderwell
Calculated Risk: Unemployment Rate Increases in 29 States in October
Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia recorded over-the-month unemployment rate increases, 13 states registered rate decreases, and 8 states had no rate change, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the year, jobless rates increased in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
…
Michigan again recorded the highest unemployment rate among the states, 15.1 percent, in October. The states with the next highest rates were Nevada, 13.0 percent; Rhode Island, 12.9 percent; California, 12.5 percent; and South Carolina, 12.1 percent. The rate in California set a new series high, as did the rates in Delaware (8.7 percent) and Florida (11.2 percent). The District of Columbia also set a series high, 11.9 percent.
Technorati Tags: Jobs, Unemployment, Mortgages
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs….
by Tom on September 29, 2009
in Cool Charts
A disturbing chart from the New York Times shows just how much we’ve lost in terms of jobs…..
Tom
Technorati Tags: Jobs, Unemployment
10 Year Picture
by Tom on August 10, 2009
in Market Musings
This chart is courtesy of the New York Times and it shows what the employment picture looks like for the last ten years…..
The Lost Decade….. (It’s actually only 9 years yet)
by Tom on July 10, 2009
in Cool Charts, Market Musings
Okay, it’s actually only 9 years but this graph is sad.
Non farm payrolls in the US are now lower than they were in 2000. We’ve lost an entire decade worth of jobs. And they will probably take some time to come back. That’s why I wrote, “It’s Different This Time! Really!”
Tom Vanderwell
More on the Jobs Report….
by Tom on July 2, 2009
in Market Musings, Videos
Bill Gross of PIMCO has some interesting and sobering analysis of what the jobs report means…..
Jobs Jobs and Less Jobs
by Tom on July 2, 2009
in Market Musings
Well, the market had been expecting 325,000 jobs lost and instead we got 467,000 jobs lost. I think you could describe that as…..
A Swing and a Miss!
Not a good sign for the overall health of the economy but it might help mortgage rates a bit.
Stay tuned, we’ll be talking about this more as the day progresses…..
Tom Vanderwell
Jobs are lost at a faster pace in June – MarketWatch
The U.S. economy shed jobs at a faster pace in June than in May, suggesting that the turnaround in the economy may take longer than expected.Nonfarm payrolls shrank by 467,000 in June, higher than the 325,000 decline expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch and the 322,000 jobs lost in May.
The unemployment rate ticked higher to 9.5% in June from 9.4% in the previous month. Economists had expected the unemployment rate to rise to 9.6%.
There was only a very slight 8,000-downward revision to payroll losses in April and May.
So what’s the biggest challenge right now?
by Tom on June 29, 2009
in Market Musings
I think the graph that Calculated Risk put together shows what the biggest challenge is right now.
JOBS
There are other reasons that people fall behind on their payments, but the biggest reason and therefore the thing that our elected officials should be the most concerned about is jobs. If people are making a decent living the majority of them will be able to make their payments. If they are getting laid off by the thousands and thousands every week, many of them aren’t going to be able to make their payments.
It’s all about JOBS and what is our government arguing about lately?
Tom Vanderwell
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs – it’s all about Jobs….
by Tom on June 18, 2009
in Market Musings, house prices
And I’m not talking about just Steve Jobs…..
We’ve talked numerous times over the time of this mess that until we get the job market to return to a growth pattern, we aren’t going to be able to see a true recovery in the housing market.
If the people at IHS Global Insight are accurate (and I believe they are – at least for my geographic area), it’s going to be a long slow slog back for the housing market.
If the housing market is tied to jobs market and the jobs market isn’t going to return to “pre-recession” levels until 2012 or beyond, then the estimates about housing inventories and housing prices turning around next year might very well be significantly too optimistic.
Stay tuned,
Tom Vanderwell
Interactive: When will the nation’s job markets return to normal? – Sacramento News
While signs indicate that the worst of the recession may be over, only six metropolitan areas across the country are expected to regain their pre-recession employment levels by the end of 2009, according to projections from IHS Global Insight, a leading economic forecaster. Most of the country – 286 of 325 metro areas covered in the IHS analysis – aren’t likely to regain their pre-recession employment levels until at least 2012.
