Yesterday's ADP jobs report caused various analysts on Wall Street to crank up their estimates for today's jobs report.
But we got another good sign, as well: Car sales.
Total December light-vehicle sales came in at a 15.3 million annualized rate. That's nicely above the 15.1 million that analysts were expecting. And although the number was down slightly from November, November was boosted due to Hurricane Sandy replacement buying and catch up from a weakness in the last days of October.
Via this chart from Calculated Risk, you can see that December was the best month (if you exclude the artificially high November) since the crisis.
And this is great, since over years, light-vehicle sales move together with the unemployment rate/jobs (which makes sense, since people who get jobs buy cars).
Hopefully this is an auspicious reading.
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