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BLS estimates (notoriously revised after the fact) boosted the May US job report more than anticipated last week. Under the hood, the actual average work week contracted to 34.3 hours and is back to January 2020 levels. If this contraction is factored into the numbers, Friday’s payroll number was negative 140,000 jobs, not the positive 339k estimate reported. Tellingly, the number of unemployed people rose by 440,000.

At the same time, the labour force participation rate for prime working-age people rose to 83.4% from 82.6% a year ago–this denotes the highest supply of labour for this critical cohort since January 2007 (Rosenberg Research). At that point in the last cycle, the Fed had already ended its tightening moves six months earlier in July 2006. They were back to cutting by September 2007, and the stock market bottomed 18 months later, in March 2009.

Today’s guest, Lakshman Achuthan, co-founded the Economic Cycle Research Institute specifically to identify these key turning points for investors. Which key turning points are in play right now? And how can we best take advantage of them? Here is a direct video link.

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