How bad is the new jobs report? Well, the only person who seems really happy about it is Mitt Romney, which tells us quite a bit.
But to borrow a line from Douglas Adams, don’t panic. Brad Plumer notes some context that’s worth keeping in mind.
One big question, however, is whether the BLS’s estimates for March are actually correct. As Ryan Avent points out, because there’s such a huge margin of error in these reports, there’s a 90 percent chance that the U.S. economy added somewhere between 20,000 and 220,000 jobs last month. In recent times, the jobs figures have gone up significantly every time they get revised in later months. […]
Meanwhile, there’s been a lot of talk lately about whether the freakishly warm winter artificially boosted the economy in January and February by helping the construction industry get an early start.
In other words, we paid in March for the good news in January and February.
What’s more, while this was clearly a disappointing report, the news wasn’t all bad. The U-6 rate dropped to its lowest level in years; average hourly pay went up; and public-sector layoffs are no longer dragging down the larger job market.









