Today's Jobs Report

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/where-do-we-go-from-here/?ref=business

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"It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull." (H.L. Mencken)

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Today's jobs report was weak. For those of us who follow labor markets, it's the lagging indicator that continues to "lag."

Who are the economists that are calling this a "recovery?" It's a recovery because we haven't had two straight quarters of negative GDP growth? How about anemic GDP growth? While this may not be the exact definition of GDP correlated with job growth, it occurs to me that 2.5% GDP growth is the minimum needed to add jobs to the economy. And, roughly 125,000 to 135,000 new jobs are needed each month just to keep up with population growth.

So 115,000 new jobs is probably not the answer.

According to David Leonhardt, we're in store for 175,000 net new jobs per month (on average) in the coming months. According to most major economists, the signals are, at best, mixed.

Economists don't think the 2.2% GDP growth for the first quarter of 2012 means a repeat of a weak 2011. The economy slowed to an annual rate of 0.4% GDP growth in the first quarter of 2011.

On the positive side, unemployment has fallen from 9.1% last August to 8.2% in March. The economy has added 1.9 million jobs in the last year. More hiring is creating more spending, a cycle in which hiring and consumer spending reinforce each other.

With 12.7 million people unemployed, today's economy needs much faster growth to boost hiring. Growth would have to be roughly 4% for a full year to lower the unemployment rate 1 percentage point.

The Fed announced that it will continue to keep interest rates low thru 2014 for a reason.