Friday, May 8, 2009

Looking at the job numbers - 8:37 AM

Let us take a look a little deeper into these numbers (we can't take them at face value). From the MarketWatch article April's loss of 539,000 jobs was the smallest decline since October's 380,000. Job losses in February and March were revised higher by 66,000. Job losses were widespread across industries in April. The only sectors adding jobs were health care and government, which was boosted by the hiring of temporary workers to prepare for the census next year. Private-sector employment fell by 611,000. According to a survey of hundreds of thousands of work sites, goods-producing industries shed 270,000 jobs, and the services industries cut 269,000. Of 271 industries, 28% were hiring in April, up from 20% in March. *** So, the numbers were better, but the only people hiring were health care and government. Plus, last months numbers were revised (as usual)so what they told us last month was BS, again. To reiterate: Employment in manufacturing fell by 149,000, while the average factory workweek rose by 0.2 hours, another encouraging sign, since the factory workweek is one of 10 major leading indicators. Employment in retail fell by 47,000. Financial services cut 40,000 jobs. Professional and business services cut 122,000 jobs, including 63,000 temporary workers, a discouraging sign. Health services added 17,000 jobs. Hospitality industries cut 44,000 jobs. Government added 72,000 jobs, mostly temporary census jobs. State and local governments added 6,000 jobs, despite widespread accounts of layoffs. Green shoots everywhere! I can't wait to hear Kudlow and CNBC spin this as good news all day. The market to 10,000! We have lost 5.7 MILLION jobs since December 2007.

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