First time in 44 months that we did not see a decline in the manufacturing sector. However, hours worked in the work-week actually declined, and the hourly wage only increased about a tenth of a percent. Hmmmmmm . . .
Some HUGE SHORT poistions was taken on BONDS before the announcement, some one in the labour dept is getting paid off.
Yo Waggie, how do you like them 769,000 new jobs added the last seven months? It looks like Bush is turning things around. You sold him short too soon. You think you might still change your vote from Kerry to Bush?
769,000 jobs in the last 7 months is nothing to write home about! The first 3 months of this year are pretty good though, and hopefully we can sustain this type of growth for the rest of the year. Stay tuned!
I don't trust them. Persons Not in the Labor Force (Household Survey Data) The number of persons who were marginally attached to the labor force totaled 1.6 million in March, about the same as a year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals wanted and were available to work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed, however, because they did not actively search for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. There were 514,000 discouraged workers in March, also about the same as a year earlier. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them. The other 1.1 million margin- ally attached had not searched for work for reasons such as school or family responsibilities. (See table A-13.) http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Someone "accidently" released the report a couple of minutes early, screwing people who were not in that loop. Here is a copy of the Reuters press release, note the time stamp. Begin quote: Reuters March Job Growth Strongest in 4 Years Friday April 2, 8:28 am ET (NOTE!!!) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employment rose last month at the fastest pace in nearly four years, easily outstripping expectations, as workers returned after a grocery store strike and construction hiring bounced back on better weather, a government report on Friday showed. The latest report from the Labor Department offered comfort to President Bush as the jobs market - a hot political issue in the U.S. presidential campaign -- finally made a decisive break to the upside. Non-farm payrolls climbed 308,000 in March, the Labor Department said, the biggest gain since April 2000 and well above the 103,000 rise expected on Wall Street. The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.7 percent from the two-year low of 5.6 percent seen in January and February. Upward revisions to January and February payrolls helped contribute to the positive tone of the report, which could fuel expectations that the Federal Reserve may be closer to raising overnight interest rates from their current 1958 low of 1 percent than had been thought. The March rise in payrolls reflected the resolution of a labor dispute at grocery stores in southern California that had idled 72,000 workers. The department said the return of those workers helped fuel a 47,000 increase in retail employment last month, but it did not quantify the impact. Economists had said the return of those workers would boost payrolls, but that the impact was hard to gauge because it was unclear how many temporary replacement workers were being let go. The report showed job gains were widespread across industries. While a long-hoped for rise in manufacturing employment did not appear, the department said factory payrolls were unchanged in March, finally breaking a string of 43 consecutive monthly declines. End quote DS
You need to have a better understanding of that 307,000 "new" jobs number because the fact of the matter is that 70,000 striking grocery workers at Safeway went back to work in March and that no doubt pushed Friday's number up HUGE! http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/040326/economy_labor_strikes_1.html
Waggie you need to have a better understanding of Wall Street's expectations. They were expecting 120,000 new jobs. Even if you take out the 70,000 grocery workers, that's still more then twice what Wall Street was expecting. And something else, you have to include those 70,000 because they were part of the 2 million or so jobs that were lost. If you count them when you take them out, you have to count them when you put them back in. Makes sense right?
Of course you need to add those 70,000 grocery jobs back! I'm just pointing out that they weren't new non-farm payroll jobs, that's all. It goes to your chest-thumping "cheerleading" about the Bush economy, that's all.