US March Employment: Still Hard To Take Seriously

The March employment numbers came out Friday, and the headline numbers were in-line with expectations. 663,000 jobs were lost, and the unemployment rate jumped to 8.5%. The Obama administration is modeling an unemployment rate of 8.9% by the end of the year. For us not to blow past that figure we’re going to need to see a serious moderation in the pace of job losses, a hefty increase in the civilian labor force (the denominator of the unemployment rate), or a healthy dose of government data manipulation.

Speaking of data manipulation, the job loss figure for January was revised down by 86,000 jobs, a 13% revision two months after the fact. Interestingly, the February number was not revised — yet. Also, the birth/death model (which I’ve written about previously) registered an increase of 114,000 jobs in March. It claims that 23,000 construction jobs were “born” last month. They must have been counting the people constructing tent cities across the country.

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