Today I looked at the US labour market data for September, and the surprising rise of Japan's consumer confidence index.
The 661k rise in September US non-farm payrolls was only slightly disappointing, and offset by a 0.5pps fall in the unemployment rate to 7.9%. But the details are not nice: in particular, the 0.3pp decline in the labour participation rate, to 61.4% is the very stuff of 'economic scarring' people have warned about. It also explains the fall in the unemployment rate: the number unemployed dropped 970k, but mainly because 879k dropped out of the workforce. Yes, this is only one month so far, but it is distinctly bad news.
Genuinely surprising news, from Japan, though, where Sept's consumer confidence index rose 3.4pts to 32.7, which was the highest since pre-covid February. Actually, though, this slightly underplays the surprise: what was driving this was a rise in expected income up 3.7pts to 35.1, and a willingness to buy durables, which rose 2.9pts to 34.9. What's unexpected about them is that it brings both indexes to within hailing distance of the 2019 average. For income, the result is 35.1, the 2019 average of 37; for wilingness to buy we had 34.9, vs a 2019 average of 35.9.
