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.

CHART OF THE DAY: Energy Sector Job Cuts  - Z Challenger

...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...