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May 4, 2012, 9:41 a.m. EDT
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By MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) "” The labor market is improving, but not nearly fast enough to satisfy us.
For the third year in a row, job growth has accelerated early in the year, only to disappoint us when the weather turns warm. In April, nonfarm payrolls rose by a disappointing 115,000, down sharply from the 250,000-a-month average seen in December, January and February. Read our complete news coverage of the 115,000 increase in nonfarm payrolls.
Now, the economists and statisticians (that is, the people who know what they are talking about) tell us not to get our panties in a twist: What we are seeing now is mostly a statistical aberration caused by unseasonably warm weather in earlier months. A construction worker not laid off in January isn't going to be hired in April, they explain.
Job growth in December, January and February wasn't really as good as it appeared, just as job growth in March and April was actually a bit better than it looked. You've got to adjust for the faulty seasonal adjustments.
Further, movements of 100,000 or so in the data in any given month simply aren't statistically meaningful. The jobs data aren't as precise as the pundits and traders pretend they are.
All that makes sense, and yet the explanation isn't satisfying.
We're sick and tired of having a sick and tired economy. We want it to get better ... now. We don't want good news in one month to be followed by bad news the next. We want to wake up from this bad dream.
The April employment report did contain some good news: The unemployment rate fell to three-year low of 8.1% "” but the good news wasn't all that good. Read the full report on the BLS website.
High-level talks between the U.S. and China have wrapped up with new economic commitments.
The rate fell for the wrong reason: Nearly 350,000 people dropped out of the labor force, almost all of them in the prime-earning years of 25 to 54. They stopped looking for a job, in part because some of them lost their eligibility to collect unemployment benefits as some states reduced the number of weeks that you can collect. The number of people who've been unemployed longer than six months declined by 207,000.
With no unemployment check coming in, there was simply no reason to keep up the charade that they were looking for a job that doesn't exist. For millions of people, there is no job to find. In February, for instance, there were 3.5 million job openings around the nation, but at least 12.8 million people seeking work.
No, these jobs numbers aren't good. They stink. But they don't stink nearly as much as they did the last time the unemployment rate was this low "” in January 2009, when 818,000 people lost their jobs.
Now, that was a bad jobs report.
"” Rex Nutting
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