The Piton Investment Team reviews economic data regularly. For many data points, the team checks on multiple sources and analyses, in order to have a broad sense of the trends that can factor into updating the holdings in Piton portfolios.
This week there was a fair amount of anticipation about the new U.S. Employment Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The reported addition of 115,000 jobs in April, lower than in March, but well above expectations, was in line with other data. By that time of the data drop, however, the team was already contextualizing the report with other updates related to employment in the U.S.:
- Initial jobless claims for the previous week were reported at 200,000. That is historically quite a low number, and the weekly report has been in the lower ranges consistently for months now.
- Hourly wages were up 0.2% in April, and 3.6% year-over-year. Whether wages rise faster than the rate of inflation is another related metric that the team tracks as one indicator of economic health.
- The National Employment Report from ADP® Research (https://adpemploymentreport.com) tracks change in U.S. private employment, whereas the BLS report includes government employment. After a relatively low number in the March report (61K), the April report recorded a higher-than-anticipated 109,000 new jobs. ADP® also reported that annual pay was up 4.4% (wage growth and spending are two other data points the team tracks and considers in relation to employment).
- Another source that the team likes to keep in the mix is the BLS’ report on U.S. Productivity (https://www.bls.gov/productivity), which has productivity up 0.8% in Q1 of 2026. Piton’s Senior Vice-President of Research, Chuck D. Etzweiler, MBA, CIMA®, CFP®, CMT, likes to refer to productivity growth as an “elixir” for multiple potential economic woes.
“No single number tells you the state of employment in the country,” continues Chuck, “and employment by itself doesn’t tell you the health of the economy. But when all these particular reports point in a similar direction, it helps our confidence in assessing that bigger picture.”
Market Analyst Craig Golden , CFA, CAIA, CMT, drills into Chuck’s point: “We talk sometimes about headwinds and tailwinds for businesses and sectors. We can think of productivity as a tailwind. Then the question becomes, what businesses are in a good position, with good fundamentals, to rush forward in that environment?”.