Household Survey Says…

The “current population survey”, aka the household unemployment survey, released today was ugly. Real ugly:

In his newsletter this morning, David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff summed it up well:

To say that the Household survey was horrible would be an understatement. This survey showed a net job destruction of 589,000, bringing the decline to 1.8 million over the past three months — more than what was lost in the entire 2001 tech-wreck-recession. All of the decline was in full-time employment, and while the bulls out there will undoubtedly point to the fact that temp agency hirings are on the rise during the last three months, finding placements for part-time workers is not a cause for celebration. Certainly not when the number of those
working part-time “for economic reasons” jumped 105,000 or at a 15% annual rate, as was the case in October.

U6, the broadest measure of unemployment, hit 17.5%. That’s an all-time high, signalling that 1 in 6 Americans is unemployed or underemployed.

Somehow markets are up again today, despite the fact that they were up 2% yesterday on supposedly rosy new unemployment claim data. Whatever. Fundamentals continue to mean little… for now. As Tyler of ZH says – good news is good, and bad news is even better.