Employment Is a Lagging Indicator

The ugly employment number is out and the market collapses. A good story for financial media but not necessarily a logical reaction for investors. That is because employment is a lagging indicator. A lagging indicator can confirm an economic trend, but cannot signal the beginning of a new one. Indeed, while employment is still struggling, retailers started to see growth already. The ugly employment number simply says that we are still around an inflection point of the macro trend. I'd overweight retail numbers, for now.