The updated Google activity data, through to 9th October, continues to paint a picture of general resilience. Even in places like the UK, which have been subjected to disruptions (specifically fuel shortages) have held up, with barely a blip in the mobility numbers nor overall economic activity. Indeed, the biggest decliner across Europe over the past week has been Germany, and really that is relatively mild and comes off very strong levels. Italy, Spain and France all ticked down too. At the top end of the scale we saw further improvements in EMs, led by India and Brazil while Japan also continues to recover from its summer soft patch. The US is as ever static, having been that way since late spring really.
Chart pack and analysis attached.
We’ve seen a further deceleration in the pace of employment growth, the September non-farm payrolls report showing just 194k jobs were created in the month, down from an upwardly revised 366k in August and well below the consensus guess of 500k. Despite the glut of job openings there was a further decline in the participation rate too, down 0.1% pts to 61.6%, which is unchanged from a year ago. That contributed to another steep fall in the unemployment rate, U3 down to 4.8% from 5.2% and U6 to 8.5% from 8.8%.
Chart pack and analysis attached.
