Breaking Down the Ugly Jobs Report

You can read the headline numbers for the March Jobs Report and depending on where you get your news it could lean towards the positive or negative side of the fence. Unfortunately the numbers were not good and it is very difficult to find a silver lining to the report.

Here is a bullet point breakdown:

• 88,000 jobs created in March - well below the estimates and smallest gain in 10 months

• February and January were revised higher by a total of 61k jobs - possibly a tiny silver lining

• Civilian Labor Force fell by 496k – at lowest level in 9 months

• Unemployment Rate dropping to 7.6% from 7.7% - This is laughable because the only reason it fell was because another 496k workers dropped out of the work force.

• The labor participation rate, which is a true number of how the jobs market is fell to 63.3%, the lowest since May 1979! The number has now spent 15 consecutive months under 64%: longest streak since 78-79

• Retailers lost 24k jobs - this could be directly affected the the payroll tax change in the beginning of the year

• The only silver lining is that it could lead to continued quantitative easing from the Fed for many more months.

• Sector Breakdown: Transports -27k, Postal -12k, Temp +20, Gov -7 (not sequester), Construction +18k, Health Care +23

• Only creating 169k jobs per month over the last 12 months

• March 2013 unemployment rate would be 10.9% if the labor force participation rate was the same as it was in January 2009 (65.7%)

• March's job gains were half the pace of the previous six months, when the economy added an average of 196,000 jobs a month.