After a couple of mixed employment reports this week, BLS resolves the debate, for now, on the high side. JOLTS showed a big spike in Openings and flat hiring raising the concern that demand was overheating and re-energizing wage inflation and labor scarcity. But that was Tuesday and on Wednesday, we saw sequentially lower ADP Health Care employment for May, sounding a demand warning sign, maybe even the result of the preceding month's JOLTS upside, throwing a wet blanket on demand for our Health Care Service longs like HCA and others.
But with the BLS update this morning, the headline for Health Care resolves positively to end the week. May numbers showed solid demand in terms of hires, +52.4K in May and better sequentially, and slowing wage inflation in April both year over year and on a 2 year basis, which puts the long providers thesis back on track. We'll be updating our trackers and the subcategory BLS data from the BLS report in the coming days and reading through to our model drivers.
