“The Conference Board has released two more bits of data which may seem confusing compared to last week’s employment report from the Labor Department. The U.S. added only 155,000 payrolls in December and the official unemployment rate ticked back up 0.1% to 7.8% for the month. While the FOMC has set some triggers for policy being closer to 6.5% unemployment, the Conference Board’s two releases today look better than the report from the Labor Department.
The quarterly report called the Measure of CEO Confidence, improved in the fourth quarter of 2012 after dipping in the third quarter. It rose to 46, up four points from a reading of 42 in the third quarter. Our note of caution here is that it takes a reading above 50 to reflect more positive than negative responses.
We also saw some improvement in the employment picture in December. The Conference Board Employment Trends Index rose to 109.02 in December versus 108.19 in November, and that is actually 3.1% higher than a year ago….”
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