#2月非农意外负增长 Non-Farm Payrolls Surprise to the Downside, Exacerbating Market Crash

The January non-farm payrolls report in February delivered a big surprise with 130,000 jobs added, but February quickly turned around and hit back. How can the volatility of the labor market be higher than that of Bitcoin? The report shows that U.S. non-farm employment decreased by 92,000 jobs in February, significantly below the previous figure of 130,000 and the expected 60,000. The unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to 4.4%, and wages grew by an additional 0.4%, which, when looking at these three numbers alone, suggests that the U.S. is currently experiencing weak employment but rising wages—a stagflation scenario.

Breaking down by industry, construction shrank by 11,000 jobs, manufacturing by 12,000, information technology by 11,000, leisure and hospitality by 27,000, and even the leading employment sector, education and healthcare, surprisingly lost 34,000 jobs. Aside from slight increases in finance and other services, employment appears to be collapsing across the board.

Careful analysis shows that the decline in construction and the small non-farm data are highly inconsistent, with a difference of up to 40,000 jobs. This may be related to delays caused by extreme weather and differences in survey methodologies.

Manufacturing and information technology were already relatively weak, so their continued decline is not particularly surprising. The sharp drop in leisure and hospitality was also expected, as North America's harsh winter this year has significantly suppressed travel, offline consumption, and labor demand. Retail data from January also reflects this, with a month-over-month decrease of 0.2%. However, two other data sets show opposite trends: on one hand, core control group consumption increased by 0.3%, indicating consumer resilience remains; on the other hand, online sales grew against the trend, contrasting sharply with offline leisure and hospitality, reflecting a shift in demand rather than an overall decline.

Regarding education and healthcare, the current explanation is that Kaiser Permanente's 30,000 employees in Hawaii and California went on strike, and this strike coincidentally falls within the survey period. If we exclude the impact of these 30,000 workers, education and healthcare still recorded negative growth this month, with overall employment decreasing by over 60,000 in February. Therefore, education and healthcare cannot change the overall downward trend.

Of course, many economists today point out that February's data was heavily affected by one-off factors, including North America's extreme winter and healthcare strikes. Additionally, the sharp employment increase in January is likely to have a natural correction effect, which suppressed both employment and the unemployment rate in February. In other words, the February data may be somewhat distorted. Yet, against this backdrop, hourly wages surprisingly increased by 0.4% in February, defying the trend. Excluding December of last year, wages have increased by 0.4% month-over-month for five consecutive months. This sustained rise indicates that although the job market is cooling, labor costs are not decreasing in tandem. Coupled with rising oil prices and imported cost pressures from tariffs, the market's concern about stagflation has undoubtedly increased.