Ouch! 275k Jobs Added in February

How many of those jobs are organic, true need for labor? Legitimately asking.

Quality/sustainability of the jobs added > the number

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January numbers were revised down from 353k to 229k

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This is the best part of this

Rate cuts are back on the table for May

Dude, dig behind the headline numbers. How many of these are part time or illegal alien jobs? What are the numbers for native born Americans? Do the research. You may learn some things.

ETA: Just saw that in the last year the US has added over 900k part time jobs. And lost almost 300k full time jobs. Woof.

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Yields are ticking down on the news and stock futures are up

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The market sees what the market wants to see.

Next week is CPI, PPI and advanced retail sales. With gasoline ticking up over February due to the rise in oil prices and the shutdown of BP's Whiting refinery, fuel isn't going to be keeping the non-Core number as low so we can expect that to remain above 3%. Core has been stalled at 3.9% thus far this year (staying higher than the 3.8% then 3.7% expectations for Jan then Feb). If it drops at all, that moves the needle closer to a cut in June but by how much will depend on what other data shows (especially revisions that are as large as the jobs revisions we've been seeing).

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I’d understand revising it by a few thousand jobs but how the hell are the initial numbers that far off?

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Job market is a mess. The above posts about part time jobs and illegal immigrant jobs has a lot of truth to it.


Household survey is far less volatile. The uptick in unemployment and the lack of labor participation is the story today.

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The uptick in unemployment and the lack of labor participation is the story today.

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Both initial and continuing claims are holding steady at near-historic lows with the LFPR remaining stuck (3rd month in a row) at 62.5%. When breaking it down by age, nothing is changing (ie: the big movement of Boomers out of the workforce happened with/during COVID and the level is now maintaining), which confuses the issue even more. Where are these workers going? How are they surviving?

Since COVID there's been a marked climb in full-timers getting part-time jobs, but not a big increase overall jobholders holding multiple jobs (something like a .2% increase from Feb 2023).

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This is the best part of this

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I read another article somewhere that indicated “hours scheduled” is at near-recession levels.

That is to say, there are a lot of jobs but hours are being cut. So, I think rate cuts may indeed become more likely.

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We still have a lot of work to do but thats a good number

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What is good about it? Seriously asking. I see a bunch of menial and part time jobs being filled by illegal immigrants. Full time jobs and jobs for native Americans are falling. And to top it off the number is likely to be revised downward. I'm searching for something to be excited about, but don't see it. These are not the numbers found in a healthy economy.

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What? Fluffed up BLS labor data is all foreign born immigrants you say? Can't be.

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These data are highly cyclical/seasonal, particularly without any season adjustments. For example, if you look at the native population employment level in the middle of Trump's term, from July 2018 to January 2019, it shows a drop of 2,479,000, which is actually 32,000 more (just 1.3% though) than the 2,447,000 drop from July 2023 to January 2024. And not only are those numbers extremely close, the month to month chart looks quite, so clearly some sort of pattern that happens during this time period.

So whatever the interpretation of this for the most recent months, one should probably apply a similar interpretation to 2018

Finally though, if you look at the data from 2010-2019, you can a pretty clear upward trend but also a pretty noticeable seasonal/cyclical pattern pretty much every year.