The Challenger jobs data for January is offering another preview of data for Friday’s non-Farm and unemployment data from the Labor Department. The January cuts were 53,486 and that is up 28% from December and up 39% from the same period a year earlier. This was the biggest single gain since the month of September. Layoffs were led by retailers, which is often the case as firms send home all of the extra Christmas workers. Another group with layoffs was financial firms.
This was actually under the average of just over 101,000 from the last eighteen years and January does usually act as one of the larger layoff months. This monthly report counts and categorizes announcements of corporate layoffs based on mass layoff data from state departments of labor.
Today’s data is unlikely to alter the expectations for Friday by much. On last look, Bloomberg was calling for a static 8.5% unemployment rate and 135,000 in new non-farm payrolls.
JON C. OGG
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