March Payrolls Crumble: Only 98K Jobs Added Despite Slide In Unemployment Rate
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Apr 7, 2017
And so the reflation trade is dead once again.
So much for that blockbuster ADP report. As we cautioned previously in our payrolls preview, the big risk to today’s payrolls report was to the downside, mostly as a result of the unseasonably cold March weather, and moments ago the BLS confirmed that indeed something snapped in March when only 98K jobs were added, roughly half of the 180K expected. This was the lowest monthly jobs number since May of 2016.
Worse, both prior months were revised lower. The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for January was revised down from +238,000 to +216,000, and the change for February was revised down from +235,000 to +219,000. With these revisions, employment gains in January and February combined were 38,000 less than previously reported.
What is surprising is that the poor Establishment Survey number was on the back of a very strong Household Survey, which saw employment rise by 472,000 to 153 million, while the number of unemployed Americans reportedly declined by 326K to a seasonally adjusted 7,202K.
Also confusing, the unemployment rate tumbled to 4.5% vs prior 4.7%; and below the 4.7%, estimate, in a range 4.6%-4.8% from 82 economists surveyed. The underemployment rate 8.9% vs prior 9.2%
There were no changes to the participation rate, which remained at 63% with the number of people not in the labor force barely changed at 94,213 million.
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