We consider our LinkUp Jobs Data to be a proxy for "Janet Yellen's Favorite Economic Indicator" --> JOLTS. The Monthly Job Opening and Labor Turnover Study gives a picture of the number of job openings. While the JOLTS is 2 months delayed (today's print was for March Job Openings), our LinkUp Job Post data is near real time (yesterday) and is highly correlated with JOLTS.
Today's 8.123M Job Openings print for March affirms what we were seeing 2 months ago, that there are A LOT of job openings out there. It also affirms what we see in the current data - There are A LOT of job openings out there!
Our street high forecast for last week's Bureau of Labor Statistics Non-Farm Payrolls number was dead wrong. Based on what we see in current Job Postings, as well as Job Postings that have been created, and filled, we were confident in a beat of even the Consensus High Wall Street Estimate.
We don't attempt to make subjective adjustments to our forecast. We look at the objective job post data, and use that as the primary input into our forecast. While we were wrong, what we know is - there are A LOT of job openings out there, at odds with the NFP miss last Friday, and certainly supportive of the theory that the Unemployment Stimulus may be holding back potential workers from grabbing all these jobs!
