http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm In addition, the economy needs to add 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. Population growth is a little under 3 million a year. So 1.8 million jobs (60% participation rate) is well within the acceptable norm of new jobs needed. Also, I suspect there will be a lot of people who were planning on retiring to remain in the labor force. Not to mention retirees which have seen their "wealth" evaporate and are forced to return to the labor force. So the actual number may need to be a tad higher than 150k since college grads are no longer replacing retirees. Essentially we're going to have a million additional people each and every month looking for work. Erroneous unemployment rate numbers do not tell story of how bad the economy is becoming. Even if Obama's plan to create or save 3 million jobs pans out, we're still fucked. The Federal Reserve saved the banks, but they're not going to be able to solve the employment situation.
I don't know why anyone pays attention to that fictitious number. The revisions are always 20% higher than what they originally reported, and the actual number would be more like 40% higher if they told the truth.
Just imagine if they had originally come out with -741,000 for January. Better to come in low and revise upwards a few months later.
The government uses the U-3 number as its benchmark for unemployment. It makes things look a lot better than they are. U-6 is a broader measure which includes "discouraged workers" (people who want a job and have been looking for more than 12 months) as well as paert timers who want full time work but can't find it. Seasonally adjusted U-6 was 15.6% for March. Reality is more than 80% higher than reporting
Note the trend. I would bet that February and March will be revised downwards below -700,000 http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/Sur...&series_id=CES0000000001&output_view=net_1mth