Friday, September 07, 2007

Ouch on initial report

OUCH is the best word that can be used to describe this morning's initial BLS report that the establishment survey is showing a loss of 4,000 jobs. This is well within the margin of error for no net, or small net gains, but it is massively below the job growth rate needed to keep up with the population based expansion of the labor force. And remember this is happening in a month that barely has had enough time to react to the credit contraction. Going forward, things may be even tighter.

Hopefully, the slowing job numbers over the past couple of months are a blip, but more likely they are a continuing indicator that the real world economy is moving sideways.

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