- David Rosenberg, the chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff, says the latest jobs report shows a recession is coming very soon.
- Both the truck transportation and durable goods manufacturing sectors lost jobs in September, even as the economy added jobs overall.
- Rosenberg said that weakeness is going to spread and bring down the ongoing decade-old economic expansion.
- His view on the jobs report is influenced by Dow Theory, a technical indicator that says industrial and transportation stocks both need to be rising in order for the market to make sustained gains.
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Friday’s jobs report can be interpreted in a lot of ways, and Gluskin Sheff chief economist and strategist David Rosenberg is interpreting it as a major warning.
Rosenberg has been bearish on the market for a long time, and he argues that within the solid but mixed jobs report is one major cause for concern. So he’s reiterating his recent call for a recession.
The jobs data included slightly disappointing hiring and slowing wage growth as trade tensions and general uncertainty continued to grow. Rosenberg is focused on something he considers an important indicator: job losses in a couple of critical parts of the economy.
He specifically notes that about 4,000 jobs were lost in both durable goods manufacturing and truck transportation in September.
“Payrolls failed the Dow Theory test in September,” Rosenberg wrote in a tweet. “Both industrials and transports posted job declines of 4k. Recession hasn’t arrived but is right around the corner.”
In its simplest form, Dow Theory says that for a market rally to last, both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Dow Jones Transportation Average need to be rising because their gains suggest that two critical parts of the economy are flourishing.
Rosenberg is extending that idea by arguing that job losses in those sectors mean the economy is getting worse. The manufacturing sector is already in a recession, and in a recent Business Insider interview, Rosenberg added that a number of parts of the US economy, such as construction, capital spending and housing, are faring just as badly.
While the economy and market have held up in the past few years in spite of Rosenberg’s forecasts, his track record is worth noting: He was one of the first experts to warn about the downturn that came to pass as the Great Recession.
In Rosenberg’s telling, the only thing that’s kept the economy and the market going is continued spending by consumers — the largest part of the US economy. But if hiring and wages are starting to slow down and demand for manufacturing and shipping of goods are fading, that’s a sign that strength might not last much longer.
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