Sunday, April 8, 2012

Employment Report: Not as Bad as I First Thought

Upon first glance, Friday's employment release was disappointing, but Scott Grannis pointed to something that does provide optimism.
In the past two months the household survey has made up for that lagging performance by posting growth of 740K jobs.
Below is a breakdown of the household survey broken down by the public (government) and private (business) sectors. The huge divergence accounts for how the household survey could show a net negative growth print for March, while the private sector grew by 336,000.


The private sector recovery over the last twelve months is now the same as the peak we saw last cycle (though that in itself was the "jobless" recovery). The main concern I see is whether the drag from the public sector will in itself cause the aggregate economy to stall, but this makes me much more optimistic than I was on Friday about a continued (albeit slow) recovery.

Source: BLS

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