Last week saw the markets nervous over recession talk – which had been reinvigorated the previous week by misreported comments by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and then again by Greenspan later actually giving his own odds for recession this year – 30 percent incidentally, before this week’s data came out. A moderately healthy employment report killed the recession talk – at least for the day on Friday – and equities responded with a mild boost while Treasuries slipped.

Jobs thump recession talk

Moderately healthy? Give me a break!

I am also sick of your whining Mark when this expansion is supposed to be “close” to the 90′s. The BLS may be just another bigger picture of Neo-con mind games and lies, a few slips of the LPF rate will do such a thing. A 5.3%UE rate isn’t as sexy as a 4.5% rate, and in the mind of the invester, a HUGE difference. The fact is, I am not the only one that has had suspicions about them since the 2003 recovery got underway. It simply doesn’t add up.

I am guessing this was addressed to me. And yes, I’m sure you are correct. All this data is generated by the “neo-cons”. The left was running the gov’t for 40 years but all those workers have been replaced by neos. No doubt Cheney is making the #s up himself! Put the kool-aid down dude.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/us-feb-payrolls-up-97000/story.aspx?guid=%7B6E0A7CCE%2DE59E%2D4CC1%2D9384%2D35887AB68FB8%7D&dist=

Don’t get too excited Barringo.

Sweet Bondie’s just having another little episode of frightful sleep and maybe just from a morsel of undigested beef.

“The data from both BLS and ADP is not consistent with a strong economy.” –quoting your opening remarks.

My guess is that the ‘under’ is the bet for some time yet.

See Chart 2, ‘Growth of Private Nonfarm Employment, Goods-Producing Industries.’

…then Chart 3, ‘….Service-Providing Industries.’

…then Chart 4, ‘….(all private nonfarm employment) by Size of (Total) Payroll.’

After you do that, you’ll find that the argument often trotted out by the Say’s Law, supply-side, ‘Greatest Story Never Told’ crew over in Kudlowvia — that ‘creative destruction,’ as it moves the goods-producing job count to the scrap heap, is a good thing — is not quite as creative as they might imagine.

For, if you take a look at those three charts it’s pretty evident that both the employment of the services-providing industries, and the level of total payroll of all sizes of businesses, seem to correlate pretty reasonably with the direction and magnitude of the level of nonfarm goods-producing employment.

Now don’t get me wrong… I’m not an advocate of supporting the buggy whip industry, even though I do have a couple of shares left of Amalgamated Crawdad and Buggy that I’ll let go cheap.

However, the Kudlowvians can’t have it both ways.

They can’t at first boast of job growth and economic prosperity in NeverToldVille, partly by crediting the correlation of the same prosperity in the goods-producing industries in the U.S. arising after the recession of 2001 — and yet later, in a now obvious downturn of goods-producing employment, discount or deny the potential for an overall reversal in job growth and economic prosperity caused by that downturn, while simply blaming the decline of nonfarm goods-producing jobs on the supposed and desired concept of creative job destruction.

Creative destruction is something that occurs over a much longer time span, with a much more shallow gradient than can be absorbed in the space of only a few years without destabilizing the overall job market and the economy with it.

A goods-producing worker needs a great deal of non-goods-producing services, and when that worker doesn’t have work… he needs far less of those services than when he was employed.

This sollution has other effects. Fewer electricy, gas, phone, cable connections and fewer furniture and durable goods needs.

Expect: 95k
Actual: 97k.

Did you ever get the feeling that the BLS first takes a gander at Street consensus before they publish? Just askin’. Anyhow, here’s the details:
. . . . . . . . .Expect Actual
Mfg Payrolls -15k -14k
Unemployment Rate 4.6% 4.5%
Average Workweek 33.8 33.7

Avg Hourly Earnings +0.3% +0.4%

The BLS says that jobs were created in healthcare (+33k), prof and biz services (+29k) and food services (+21k). Wholesale and Retail were flat. Air transport lost 7k. Construction dropped 62k. Of course, the very cold and snowy weather is a factor, but not if you’re a builder in Arizona, I would imagine. So the +28k construction jobs added in January were followed by a -62k in February. Use your head when considering the weather in general. Because besides the fairly equal losses in res and non res construction, the BLS noted that “heavy construction” lost 10k jobs as well.

Oh, who cares? I am so sick and tired of talking about doctor’s offices, laid-off sheet-rockers and bartenders, a shorter work week and a 6 cent increase in pay. When at the same time, we have a problem festering in the system, in case anybody is paying attention. So sorry if I can’t get too worked up about a 4.5% rate of unemployment when NEW, for just one, tiny example, ceases its business because its lenders are balking. That plus about another million BIG HINTS which for some reason, we are choosing to ignore.

Question: Where are all the foreclosed-upon families going? Tents? If the abandoned homes had been of the spec variety (unoccupied), then who will raze them? But my favorite is Cramer who is pounding the table in favor Advance America, Cash America, that ilk, as a great way to play the middle-class lending crisis. Cool.

I think I’ve had enough. You?