News

The unemployment rate remains safely below four percent and is low by historical standards. Although it has not been able to surpass inflation, wage growth has been steady near five percent, beyond anything registered in the decade between the financial crisis and the onset of COVID. Nonetheless, inflation has been increasing faster than wages since the first quarter of 2021, implying that consumer spending power has been falling despite higher income.

Given widespread reports of a slowdown in mill demand, the decrease to USDA consumption this month could have been anticipated. China is central to global cotton demand, and the continued inversion of traditional relationships between Chinese prices and other benchmarks may signal that a global recovery in demand is not yet underway.

The U.S. labor market continues to add jobs and support wage growth. This may give the Federal Reserve more room to continue to aggressively increase interest rates to tame inflation. For this reason, financial markets turned lower after the positive job report.

The recent volatility in NY/ICE futures has been attributed to various factors, including short covering in the futures market and import interest from China. The steep increases in early November can also be interpreted as a sensitivity to potential increases in demand for U.S. exports.

The U.S. economy was estimated to have added 261,000 jobs last month. This was the lowest addition since December 2020, but job growth has nonetheless remained resilient to interest rate increases.