Highlights from the Non-Farm Payrolls

Well the number came in below expectations at +162,000 for March. The real highlights were the +48,000 census workers hired (temporary jobs), +81,000 inferred by the Birth/Death model (all they do is guess), and a weather adjustment of +100,000. I would strip out the census hiring and the B/D model because these do not give you a good indication of how the real economy is doing. When you do this you get +33,000 jobs. Even this is a little suspect considering how the BLS calculated the Feb. weather adjustment into the numbers. Overall, the job market remains terribly weak but is slowly recovering. An interesting note--the US has to create 200,000 jobs per month just to keep up with the growth in the population. So in order to see a sustained drop in unemployment, you would need to have over 200,000 jobs created per month. We are a long way from that.


Black Swan Insights

Highlights from the Non-Farm Payrolls