Want to know where the Dow is headed? Keep an eye on job growth

Filed under: Forecasts, Indices, Economic data

Now that the U.S. economy is growing -- GDP grew at a 3.5% annualized rate in Q3, according to U.S. Commerce Department data, one key question for investors large and small is: Is the U.S. economic expansion sustainable?

Investors can immerse themselves in data on consumer spending, retail sales, new home sales, auto sales, and factory output etc., and all of those provide clues, no question. But if you're time-pressed and you want one metric to gauge the U.S. economy's likely health 6-9 months from now, monitor: monthly non-farm payrolls, as tallied by the U.S. Labor Department. I.E., how many jobs the U.S. economy lost or created in the previous month.

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Want to know where the Dow is headed? Keep an eye on job growth originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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