110k Jobs: Fugly

FUGLY.

That’s the only word to describe the stinkeroo released by BLS at 8:30 am.

Non-farm payrolls grew by a mere 110,000 last month — that’s the weakest
performance since July 2004. Note that the economy requires about 150k/mo just to keep up with population growth. So this was not only weak — it was step backwards.

Revisions were also negative: January revised downward to  124,000 jobs (from 138k), while February’s data was lowered to 243,000 from 262,000.

Given yesterday’s New Unemployment Claims, I find the drop of two-tenths of a percentage point (from 5.4% in February) in Unemployment
rather curious.

All told, a giant stink bomb.

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  1. marku commented on Apr 1

    And what about Mr Market’s reponse? It should have been up on this non-inflationary jobs report. Is this more confirmation of your bear call?

  2. jjr commented on Apr 1

    C’mon Barry, what’s curious about the Unemployment numbers? You know as well as I do that people have been falling off the rolls for months and months now. The way the numbers are constructed can lead to falling claims in a falling employment environment. I guess the good news is that new claims aren’t jumping fast enough to keep up with old claims falling off and seekers who have just given up … yet!

  3. muckdog commented on Apr 1

    Well, the Democrats say that the unemployment rate keeps falling because nobody’s looking for work anymore. Permanently unemployed don’t show up on the list. They say it’s like the Great Depression out there. Except everybody’s buying and selling $800,000 investment properties I guess.

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