Is This What A Job Recovery Looks Like?

US Planned Layoffs Jump to a 5-Month High:

The number of planned layoffs by U.S. firms jumped 41.1 percent in October to the highest level in five months, although the number includes more than 10,000 jobs in U.S.-owned auto plants in Europe, a report said on Thursday.

 Employers announced 47,724 planned job cuts last month, up from September's 33,816, according to the report from consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It was the highest level since May. U.S. automotive companies said they will let go of 11,615 workers, though that includes 10,900 Ford Motor [F  11.015    -0.145  (-1.3%)   ] layoffs that will affect workers in Belgium and the U.K. (Read More: Ford to Shut European Plants, Cut Jobs as Losses Mount)

The planned layoffs were modestly higher than the 42,759 announced in October last year. The total for the year so far stands at 433,725, down from 521,823 for the same period in 2011.

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ADP "Cancels" 365,000Private Jobs Created In 2012:

 Frequent readers know that in addition of any "data" and "numbers" out of Larry Yun's National Association of Realtors, which we openly boycott as these are consistently manipulated (recall the massive historical December 2011 revision), slanted and conflicted, the second dataset which we have mocked with a passion is anything coming out of the ADP, which every month releases its "Private Jobs" number a day before the official BLS Non-farm Payroll data. Today, our mockeries have been proven 100% spot on. The reason? A week ago, ADP announced that going forward it would coordinate with Moody's (yes, that Moody's), and especially its chief economist, SecTres hopeful (InTrade odds of actually attain that post: 0.00) Mark Zandi, to fudge adjust its data going forward. The data revision was supposed to be publicly disclosed tomorrow when the official October ADP number was released. Well, just like today's Chicago PMI, and so many other data points recently, this too was released early. What the early release allowed us to promptly calculate is that using the historically revised numbers, and comparing those based on the original methodology, in 2012 alone, the US would have lost a whopping... 365,000 private jobs! Putting thus number in context, according to the revised methodology, the US has generated only 1.172MM jobs in 2012 through September, or in other words, a statistical "fix" magically eliminated over 30% of what the market had previously expected were job gains, a number which the incumbent president has certain taken advantage of on more than one occasions while campaigning.

 The chart below shows the old data series (which can still be found at the St. Louis Fed), and the new series, which can be extracted from the advance leaked press release. The cumulative difference is the black line. It needs no explanation.

I have no idea what kind of number we'll see tomorrow from the BLS(BS) but its likely to be essentially meaningless given their propensity to report numbers then make "remarkable" revisions a few months later. But one thing is clear: the business environment is looking negative for job creation and we may learn sometime in the first quarter that we have actually gone back into recession (In my opinion the recession of 2008 never ended) in Q3 of 2012. Whomever the next President is, they will likely inherit an economy in decline, one that has not recovered from the last "recession".

Incidentally, That's what an economic depression actually is.