There was some good news to go along with the increase in unemployment: 244,000 jobs were added. Not great, but it’s something.
From Bloomberg:
Payrolls expanded by 244,000 last month, the biggest gain since May 2010, after a revised 221,000 increase the prior month, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The jobless rate climbed to 9 percent, the first increase since November, a separate survey of households showed. Employment was forecast to grow by 185,000 last month, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
Stocks jumped after four days of losses, commodities rallied and bonds slid as the report eased concern that the economic recovery is cooling. The figures bolster Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s forecast for a labor market that is “improving gradually.”
You can read the rest of Bloomberg’s analysis here.
Also, the New York Time’s Economix blog has an analysis of the seeming contradictory numbers (unemployment up, payrolls up):
Which of the two numbers should you believe? The short answer is the job-growth number. The labor market appears to be improving. The rise in the unemployment rate is mostly a reflection that the rate fell by an artificially large amount over the previous several months.
It doesn’t actually mean unemployment rose last month. Instead, it reflects a kind of statistical catch-up. The old picture of the job market, as presented by the household survey, had been too optimistic. (Did anyone really believe that the job market recently improved at its most rapid two-month pace since the 1950s, as the unemployment rate suggested?) Today’s report helps correct the picture. This is simply the nature of surveys: they have noise in them.
You can read the rest of it here.
