An Unemployment Report that’s Not Too Bad

Looking on the bright side, it’s good news for the US labor market that the unemployment rate was unchanged, at 6.1%, according to the data released today by the BLS. In fact, payrolls even grew by 57,000. This wasn’t enough to match the average of 100,000 or so new people that enter the work force each month in the US, and obviously wasn’t enough to make a dent in the net job losses of over 3 million people over the past 3 years… but at least it was net job creation for the American economy, for the first time in 8 months. This report was better than the average expectation among economists as reported by Briefing.com, which was for payrolls to shrink slightly.

On the not-so-bright side, it’s a bit unfortunate that a stable unemployment rate at 6.1% is “good news.” And, as I pointed out yesterday, we’re in the middle of what is supposed to be a high-growth period for the US economy.

Kash