Editor's Note: The chart and excerpt below are from today's Morning Newsletter written by U.S. Macro Analyst Christian Drake. Click here to learn more/subscribe.
...The weakness in the BLS report accords with the Challenger Job Cut data for April, see the Chart of the Day below, which showed energy sector job cut announcements re-ramping to +20K in April. Notably, collective net employment gains across our basket of eight energy states was -56K in March, the first delta negative month since September 2010, with the remarkable -26K decline in Texas leading job losses at the state level. For scale, the estimated -26K decline in Texas on an employment base of 11.7M would equate to an NFP print of -305K at the national level.
We’ll find out if the weakness portended by the Challenger data and emergent angst over a prospective state-level recession in Texas finds further traction in April with the release of the state level data on May 27th...