Hiring in the U.S. rose more than forecast and the jobless rate unexpectedly dropped, giving the economy a spark as it struggles to overcome slumps in housing and manufacturing.
The 180,000 increase in employment followed a 113,000 gain in February that was larger than previously estimated, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. The jobless rate fell to 4.4 percent, matching October's five-year low.
New jobs and bigger paychecks are giving more Americans the means to spend, preventing the housing recession from spreading to the rest of the economy. The drop in the jobless rate may concern Federal Reserve policy makers who've said the threat of inflation is a bigger risk for the expansion.
Here's a link to the report
First, The BLS revised February's number up. This has been a standard pattern for this expansion. The BLS added 800,000 or so jobs in an annual revision a few months ago.
Now, the internals are pretty solid.
Construction jobs increased 56,000. The means all the construction workers laid-off in January were essentially rehired. My guess is non-residential construction is doing most of the hiring at this point.
Oddly, professional services lost 7,000. That area of job growth has been pretty consistent for most of this expansion.
Education and health added 54,000 and leisure/hospitality added 21,000. The health area employment has been solid for the last 4 years as has leisure and hospitality.
Average hourly earnings increase 6 cents, and hours worked increased .1 hours.
This is a good report.
6 comments:
Yes, and it's a good thing that the markets are closed today in the US or otherwise we would be seeing a major downdraft. At least the market mavens will have the weekend to mull over how the elimination of the expected interest rate cuts will affect their positions and act accordingly. Aren't Bernanke's maneuvering alternatives becoming rather limited? How's he gonna be able to help the party in power going into the 2008 election?
Bernanke's moves have never been that strong anyway. All of the public testimony from Fed officials have had a clause that inflation was too high. That has been consistent for a long time.
Anybody who thinks the Fed will lower rates outside of a recession is forecasting their individual desires rather than underlying facts.
Oddly, professional services lost 7,000. That area of job growth has been pretty consistent for most of this expansion.
Perhaps these jobs were coming out of the service side of the housing market? The mortgage brokers, real estate agents, etc.
bonddad:
Russ Winter has been on a tear today. He has (re-)discovered that the Bush Administration killed the BLS's "mass layoff" counting program in late 2003, which means the BLS no longer accounts for these except among 5 states which have "WARN" programs.
Here's the link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/01/03/MN120712.DTL&nl=fix
Since this is the first downturn since Bushco killed the program, we don't have a way to know how official jobs/unemployment data would look with the mass layoff data counted -- do we?
Any ideas for how to recreate the data and see how it might be distorting recent jobs/unemployment releases?
Slightly off topic, but there is a nice three-way pissing contest over Bruce Bartlett's NY Times op-ed. The players, Bartlett, Krugman and host Mark Thoma.
If you think the Fed knows (knew?) what it is doing this may prove enlightening:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/04/bruce_bartlett_.html
Bartlett defends his version of trickle down and says it has been corrupted by the present admin.
re commercial construction vs. residential
http://starbulletin.com/2007/04/06/business/story01.html
they agree with your assessment at least for Hawaii.
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