The Street has been bracing all week for horrendous payroll news this morning, so the numbers would have to be grim indeed to shock investors into a headline selloff. We expect the opposite, actually ' a short-squeeze rally in stocks amd the dollar ' if the news is anything less than ghastly. A decline of 60,000 non-farm jobs is expected, but that doesn't sound too bad to us considering the size of the layoffs that have been occurring in recent weeks. Motorola, for one, announced that it would axe an additional 2,600 workers on top of the 7,200 it has laid off already, and Dell plans to cut 8,000. Two airlines went out of business in just the last few days, eliminating who-knows-how-many positions. Even the pharmaceutical companies are hurting. Wyeth said this week that it would lay off 1,200 reps, and Schering-Plough quickly topped them with an announcement that 10% of its 55,000 workers will soon be pink-slipped. We don't know how the pundits and professional expecters came up with the 60,000 figure, but it seems incredibly low to us. Did they perhaps fabricate one of those bold seasonal adjustments that have helped keep inflation so low in this country? Not-Quite-Unemployed The payroll numbers would be a whole lot scarier if they attempted to reckon the partial loss of jobs that occurs when service-sector employees go from good times to bad. None of the realtors we know in the Denver area is exactly knocking 'em dead, and a few of them have told us that business has never been worse. But not a single one considers himself unemployed, and we can't imagine what it would take for any of them to go on the dole. The same goes for our consultant friends. Business will probably never be so bad
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