As most people know already, nonfarm payrolls rose 528,000 for the month and unemployment came in at 3.5% last week, blowing past estimates of 258,000 and 3.6%.

The dominos that are going to fall in response to this report could wind up absolutely torching equity markets. Here’s why:

1. This report, very likely, belies the point that many of these new jobs are likely second and third jobs being taken on by people who are feeling the brunt of recession. Prices are too high and rates are moving higher – people are scrambling, in the absence of stimulus checks and free money to right their respective financial ships. This isn’t a “healthy” reason for job creation.
2. However, this report is undoubtedly going to be peddled by the Biden administration of “proof” that the U.S. isn’t in recession, despite the last two negative GDP prints. In fact, I’d bet anything I own that “special consideration” was given to this print simply to help along the narrative that we’re not in recession when we definitely are.
3. If that wasn’t enough of a backwards looking clusterfuck, this report is also likely going to falsely embolden the Fed to continue the cycle but hiking rates even further with a “green light” to keep fighting inflation. This may help the job print one or two more times after this for the same reasons it did this time, but then we’re going to be stuck with rates at historic recent highs, a labor market that literally can’t physically take on any more hours and an economy that is still printing negative GDP numbers. This is a perfect storm for an economic collapse.

But it won’t take that long for us to get said market collapse, in my opinion. As I wrote recently in an article about why lying about recession is only going to hurt markets, we are already in for a credit shock, regardless of whether the Fed feels emboldened by this new number.