I confess. Before yesterday's report on nonfarm payroll employment growth for February, I was betting that the statistics would come in weaker than expected. I really had no good reason for this belief -- just a fatalistic sense that, surely, the data would continue to confuse us.
Doesn't look that way to me now. Solid growth, broad-based:
It's true that the estimates of nonfarm payroll growth for December and January were revised downward, and the unemployment rate actually rose. But not by much. From TheStreet.com:
February payroll additions were above the 210,000-job consensus of economists, although the upside was moderated by an 18,000-job downward revision to January and December's numbers. The unemployment rate rose to 4.8% from 4.7% in January, and average hourly wages grew by 0.3%.
Kash pgl notes that the unemployment figure is related to an increase in the labor force participation rate. but like the jobless rate itself, the change is barely noticeable:
Of course, we should always be careful about reading too much into a single month's data -- head over to Mark Thoma's place to see the current numbers in a longer-run perspective. But here are two views on the February report as a whole: Barry Ritholtz says it's a "fair report. Not terrible, but not great." William Polley, on the other hand, says "It is very good news." I'm with William.
If you are interested, here are the powerpoint slides from the pictures above, and more:
Download Employment_Slides_3.10.06.ppt
UPDATE: Jim Hamilton thinks the employment report is "another indication that the economy is recovering nicely from the bump in the road we encountered last quarter." (And he helps me out by giving the heads up on a mislabeling of the original participation rate graph -- which I have corrected. I also fixed it in the downloadable powerpoint file.)