Brokerhunter.com Monthly Employment Report

Overall
The December employment report, which came out on January 4, was an unpleasant New Yearís surprise, showing the weakest job growth since August of 2003. Last month only 18,000 jobs were added in the entire non-farm jobs area, as unemployment shot up to 5%. Economists were expecting an increase of 58,000 jobs. The lionís share of the job losses were, not surprisingly, in construction and in related manufacturing ñ a byproduct of the mortgage crises.

All of this is evidence of a slowing economy; with some economists predicting a recession in 2008 and others speculating that we are already in one. This puts all eyes on the FED to lower rates, but troublesome inflationary worries caused by rising oil and commodity prices and a falling dollar make future rate cuts more problematic.

Financial Services
The Securities Industry sector lost 3,000 jobs during the period, which was the biggest drop in jobs in nearly 4 years and taking us off of historically high employment levels. In fact, Decemberís report brought the 2007 results down to a growth rate of just under 2.7% - the weakest growth for the industry since 2005. On the Insurance side, job growth actually increased by nearly 4,000 jobs.

Preliminary numbers for the retail group of financial services arenít available yet for December, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the retail financial advisor and related support positions have been minimally affected by these economic developments.