Ahead of tomorrow’s Jobs Report, we have the additional forerunner Challenger, Gray & Christmas reporting a 68% increase in job cuts last month. The 61,582 slashed jobs represents a 53% increase over this time last year. The lines on the above graph, comparing California’s percentage of young adults living with their parents and their unemployment rate with that of the state of North Dakota, will have converged recently on account of the massive layoffs in the oil fields resulting from falling oil prices.
Initial weekly Jobless Claims were up 3,000 from last week, but below expectations. There are 2.28 million Americans receiving an unemployment check every week, and none of them are buying homes.
Despite ominous precursors, it is anticipated that tomorrow the BLS will announce that 218,000 new jobs were created last month, almost doubling the 126,000 number from March. That 200K-ish target has been constant while the number has continued to decline over the last five months.
