A GOOD, BUT NOT GREAT, JOBS REPORT

lt looks like spring has finally arrived for the U.S. economy, but it is not time to crack out the bubbly just yet.

The headline figure in Friday's employment report - 288,000 jobs added in April - was encouraging, as were some other details in the report. After the latest revisions, job growth in the past three months averages to about 240,000, a marked improvement over last year.

Moreover, the job creation seems to be broadly based. Construction, retail, and professional services ali saw big jumps in payroll numbers last month, indicating that the economy is recovering from the cold winter. lf this trend is sustained, the recovery will, by historical standards, start to look more normal, and healthier.

That's what 1, and others, predicted at the start of the year, but the cold winter delayed the expected increase in hiring and spending. Now things appear to be more on track.

That said, the jobs report also has a negative side, which should not be ignored. The unemployment rate fell from 6.6 per cent to 6.3 per cent, but this is largely the result of a big drop in the number of people looking for work: the labor force shrank by 806,000 people.

A falling labor force is usually a sign of a weak economy, not of a strong one. The labor-force-participation rate fell to 62.8 per cent, the lowest since 1978. The employment-to-population ratio - the broadest measure of the health of the labor market - stands at 58.9 per cent, which is also a very low figure by historical standards.

...

The good figures from the payroll survey do not change this picture, and they do not alter the fact that more than a third of the unemployed - about 3.5 million Americans - have been out of work for more than six months. So let's celebrate the good news but not get carried away.

Posted by John Cassidy - New Yorker, May 2, 2014 adapted from:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/05/04/google-

doodle-audrey-hepburn-actress-birthday/8695579/