March Jobs Report

The economy in the United States added only 120,000 jobs last month according to the BLS. Many analysts and forecasters had expected over 200,000 jobs added, but anyone keeping track knows they have been uselessly inaccurate as of late. The numbers for January were revised down, and the numbers for February revised up, for a net of basically no change. The unemployment rate dropped due to people dropping out of the labor force. While there were many encouraging signs and statistics over the past month, GDP growth had slowed from the annualized rate of 3% seen in the fourth quarter of 2011. There was a disconnect between job numbers and GDP numbers, and it turns out now that the job numbers were the ones out of sync.

The same thing happened last year; a winter of solid job numbers ended with spring. So this past winter’s numbers seem to be more of a seasonal phenomenon rather than a lasting improvement in the economy and labor market. Additionally, the unusually warm winter could have thrown off seasonally adjusted figures to overstate growth. It’s certainly bad news, when this happened last year it was explained away by harsh winter weather in the northeast and the tsunami in Japan. Neither of which happened this year. A bumpy recovery was to be expected, but the further out we are from the recession, the worse it is to be standing in the same place.