Don’t fret over the US jobs data yet

They are no indications of an imminent breakout of a new recession phase

If this is what a slowing labour market looks like, I’ll take it. For an economy that’s been growing for almost a decade and that we know is starting to cool, 155,000 new US jobs in November isn’t too shabby. Sure, the figure is less than estimated, but payroll numbers tend to move around quite a bit month-to-month. It’s tough to quibble with an unemployment rate of 3.7 per cent.

The two other premier indicators that begin each calendar month, surveys of purchasing managers by the Institute for Supply Management, outperformed expectations.

Sure, activity is cooling — from a strong pace. Two years of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve are going to have an effect; they are supposed to. But the Fed has signalled clearly that it won’t be business as usual next year, and that a pause is in the wings.

Part of what’s worrying people is the way the R word is bandied about. Being on constant watch for a recession, a person would miss a lot. Of course there will be a recession!

That doesn’t mean it’s imminent or that it’s necessarily coming next year. What we do know is the US expansion is on track to next year become the longest ever. The average is about five years.

Based on the norm, the US ought to be in recession now. Yes, right now. That’s if you believed a Bloomberg News survey of economists published in 2015, foreshadowing a slump in 2018.

The global picture isn’t great, and it’s remarkable how quickly the “synchronised upswing” of economies fell out of sync. The euro region is crawling along, and the area’s industrial powerhouse, Germany, is performing unevenly. China is slowing, as it has been for a decade.

People mused about that possibility in the late 1990s when the economy appeared to be a technology-driven marvel. That party ended in a pretty mild recession in 2001.

While we wait for the inevitable, let’s take November’s employment numbers for what they are: solid, if unspectacular. The sky isn’t falling. Not today.