US equities are moving higher this morning following positive news from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For the month of December, 252,000 jobs were added to the economy, this is significantly higher than consensus expectations of 245,000 jobs being added. Also intriguing is that the November job change was revised higher to a whopping 353,000 from an original reading of 321,000. Monthly employment change estimates have been revised higher quite frequently over the past few months and we believe that December will also see a strong revision. The unemployment rate is continuing to fall as it came in at 5.6%, down from the 5.8% experienced in November. It is very encouraging that construction and manufacturing, the backbones of our economy, added 84,000 jobs as it means businesses are ramping up production to meet product demand.

Later today, we will be presenting Wholesale Inventory data which provides a measurement of the dollar value of sales made and inventories held by merchant wholesalers.