S&P And Nasdaq Close At New Records Ahead Of This Morning's Employment Report _work_labor_business_employ_1010_565x377.jpg) Image: Bigstock Stocks ended solidly higher yesterday with both the S&P and Nasdaq closing at new all-time records. Earnings season continues to drive stocks with companies of all sizes impressing on both the top and bottom lines. And guidance as well. We've got another 200 companies on deck to report today. And then another 1,372 next week. But the focus today will shift to jobs with the Employment Situation report.
Expectations are for 900,000 new jobs being created last month (750K in the private sector and 150K in the public), with the unemployment rate ticking down from 5.9% to 5.7%, and the participation rate ticking up from 61.6% to 61.7%. Although, after Wednesday's ADP Employment Report missed their job creation expectations with 330,000 private sector jobs vs. views for 700,000, many are tempering their true expectations.
However, both the ADP miss, and last week's Q2 GDP miss (6.5% vs. 8.0%), have been blamed on supply chain disruptions and worker shortages. (It's not like there aren't enough jobs out there. Quite the opposite, there aren't enough people to fill them.) But these issues are transitory. With extended unemployment benefits scheduled to end in September, and many of those who were incentivized to stay home now being 'forced' to return to work, that will begin to bring relief to both supply shortages and worker shortages while simultaneously easing inflation concerns as well. That suggests big GDP growth in Q4 and big job growth as well. So it's possible we could see a lighter than expected read on jobs this morning. But maybe not. Either way, whatever we see this morning, it's likely it'll be much higher in Q4. And that suggests a lot more upside to go for both the economy and the market. So make sure you're taking full advantage of it. Best,  Kevin Matras
Executive Vice President, Zacks Investment Research | 
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