From the Bureau Of Lies And Scams (BLS):
Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 216,000 in March, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.8 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, health care, leisure and hospitality, and mining. Employment in manufacturing continued to trend up.
Yeah, ok.
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How about the workweek and salaries?
In March, average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.3 hours in March. The manufacturing workweek for all employees edged down by 0.1 hour to 40.5 hours, while factory overtime was unchanged at 3.3 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 0.1 hour to 33.6 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.) The average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls were unchanged at $22.87. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 1.7 percent. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees edged down by 2 cents over the month to $19.30. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)
No help here. No increase in hours worked and no hourly earnings improvement either. For production and non-supervisory workers (those where price increases really hurt) they saw a bit of a decline. This is quite-bad news; note that the average annual wage for these workers is $38,600 pre-tax. That's materially under the average worker's income used in the BLS CPI tables, and it is those who have incomes under the median that experience the worst of income allocation shifts into non-discretionary purchases such as food, energy and medical.
This just plain sucks given the price inflation that is clearly-evident in the PPI since August. These price increases are now going to start showing up on the store shelf over the next couple of months. We should also see the impact of these PPI changes being emitted from the rear end of the economy (that is, the business end that hurts you, the consumer) in the 1st quarter earnings reports beginning in earnest on the 11th.
Let's go look at our numbers and see if there's a "there" there.
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That's small improvement. I guess you can say it's not another turn-down.
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The number of employed ticked up a bit. That's positive. But it did last year too, only to flag off as we got into the summer.
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"Not in labor force", annualized, isn't any good. Yes, the monthly number looks good, but there are seasonal effects. On an annualized basis we're still above the zero line - then again, we have been like ... well ... forever. This is a problem and to a material degree reflects the underlying problem we have with labor in this country - we're losing participation. Permanently.
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Here's the grand-daddy number. It's following the seasonal pattern; let's see if it peaks in May. More-importantly, let's see if it puts in a lower high to go with the lower low.
That would be bad, and until the pattern changes, it's what you have to expect.
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Nowhere is this more-evident than in this chart. Positive change? Where? This is the root of the problem - participation, as a percentage of the workforce, continues to decline. This in turn means that the budgetary pressures will not come off. And that, in turn, is very bad from an intermediate and longer-term stability perspective.
What this all boils down to is that job growth is insufficient to support the economy on its own. Yet the ability to keep writing hot checks to the tune of $1.7 trillion a year or more to support a fake "recovery" is not infinite.
The wall is clearly visible through the fog at this point.
Why do we still have our monetary and fiscal foot mashed on the accelerator?
