Saturday, May 5, 2012

Looking for the Good News in the April Jobs Report

The April jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is not a strong one. Most comments have focused on the bad news, especially the modest 115,000 increase in payroll jobs. If you look hard, there is some good news, too, although not as much or as easy to find as we would like.

Start my looking more closely at the numbers for payroll jobs. The headline number was admittedly paltry. However, there were some welcome upward revisions for earlier months.  The March number was revised up by 34,000, to 154,000, and February’s by 19,000, to 259,000. All in all, the April report revealed 168,000 new jobs that we didn’t previously know about. That sounds at least a little better. Read more>>>

Follow this link to view or download a brief classroom-ready slideshow with charts of the latest employment numbers.

No comments:

Post a Comment