US job growth better than expected ... and yet even then there's downside.
The US economy added 222k jobs last month vs a projection of 178k, while unemployment rose to 4.4% vs an estimate of 4.3%. On paper this sounds like a good thing for the US. The economy is adding jobs, people are rejoining the workforce in, well, force, and the Federal Reserve is continuing to advocate for a slow growth model. Less discussed, however, are two things: 1. Wages rose less than expected, 0.2% vs 0.3%. The trouble in the US hasn't been a lack of jobs so much as a lack of jobs that pay well enough to sustain a working class lifestyle. 2. While payroll gains were broad-based, they were significantly boosted by the biggest jump in government jobs in almost a year. Take away these government jobs and job growth would have been roughly what was projected. While the general consensus has been that the euro will weaken or stagnate, with most forecasts estimating somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.13 EUR/USD in the middle of 2018, Deutsche Bank's most accurate for
