Summary: It’s time for the monthly festival of misinformation about the jobs report! The report must be described as exciting in order to generate trade commissions for brokers, clicks for journalists, and triumphs for politicians. Here’s the bottom line (it’s more interesting than the spin). This is the second of today’s posts.
- The first estimate of February’s employment growth: 235 thousand. That’s down slightly from January’s gain of 238 thousand, and slightly above Street expectations.
- More usefully expressed, the number of job rose in February by 2.0% SAAR, the same as in January. That’s slightly above the average of 1.8% during the past 5 years.
- Wage growth for workers was 2.2% SAAR, slower than the 2.5% YoY – and below inflation rate of 2.5%.
The bottom line: more of the same in February. No change of trend. Don’t buy the hype. To see the interesting and important insights in the February jobs report, read the full post at Seeking Alpha.
