Here’s a tale of two American jobs – on Friday night the August jobs report startled markets for a while by being inconclusive. Attention had been on Friday’s report all week and in the end it was a fizzer.
But then attention switched to another announcement involving more jobs – a ghost in fact.
This one will appear early Wednesday morning, Sydney time, with expectations.
We are talking about Apple, the corporate descendant of Steve Jobs, which will release a series of new products, starting to iPhone 6 which could very well spark another tech rally, or crunch.
Investors will be looking at the Apple releases and deciding whether the tech giant has rediscovered the mojo Steve Jobs gave the company before his death, or continues to struggle for inspiration.
Apple shares ended trading Friday night, our time, in a holding pattern on Friday, closing up 0.9% to $US98.97 ahead of the big launch, which will hark back to the company’s foundations three decades ago.
The company will launch the 6th version of the iPhone (with a watch type device also tipped for release) at the Flint Center in Cupertino in California, which is where Apple and Jobs first launched the Macintosh computer 30 years ago.
Apple is expected not only to reveal the sixth version of the iPhone, but with two models, clearly identified as the Pro and the Air, instead of the C and S classifications, as with some previous models.
That seems to be a new move by the company to bring the same identification to iPhones that exists in its lap tops (the Mac Pro and the Air (lighter, smaller version).
The two new iPhones will come with larger screens expected to be made of a tough new sapphire material.
One version reportedly will have a 4.7-inch display (up from 4 inches for the iPhone 5), and Apple will also introduce the other with a 5.5-inch screen, as a competitor to Samsung’s Galaxy Note.
Media reports suggest that Apple will double the maximum amount of storage in the new phones to 128 gigabytes.
And Apple is expected to make its long-awaited entrance into the wearable computing market with what some are calling the iWatch.
The watch will give consumers access to Apple’s iOS operating system on their wrists, taking on Android-powered smartwatches from Samsung and LG and Intel, this week.
Apple is also expected to reveal an updated version of the iOS (version 8).
Apple is aiming the new iPhone for the Christmas and holiday shopping season. In 2013, Apple sold 51 million iPhones during the last quarter of the year, almost 7% more than the final quarter of 2012.
One possible new feature for the new phone and perhaps other existing products is the iWallet, which would get Apple into mobile payments (like the near field credit cards).
And then there’s the US jobs report for August which surprised on the downside, helping markets finish a messy week on an up note as investors pushed out the timing of the Fed’s first rate rise since late 2008.
The report showed the number of new jobs created fell to just 142,000, and an additional 28,000 jobs were cut from the reports in June and July.
It was the smallest rise since December, and fell well short of the 228,000 gain forecast by the market. But there were one off factors in retailing and car making which seem to have impacted the report, as well as a drop in the number of people looking for work.
The latter saw the unemployment rate drop to 6.1% to match a six-year low.
The hiring slowdown ended a six-months of 200,000 or more jobs a month being created.
US jobs print disappoints
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But digging deeper into the report, the drop came from a couple of short term factors – thousands of employees at a supermarket chain in New England called Market Basket had their hours cut or they walked off the job to protest the firing of a well-liked chief executive. That strike has now been resolved.
And US car makers Auto laid off fewer workers in July ahead model changes, so they recalled fewer employees than usual in August.
US analysts say its likely the report will be upgraded in the monthly reports in the next two months.
But the best sign from the report was an increase in hourly wages after no change in July. Wages rose 0.2% to $US24.53.
That left wages over the past 12 months up just 2.1%, about steady with inflation, which is an improvement on being substantially behind inflation, as they were earlier in the year.
