Labor Pains

With GDP growth at 2% for the past several years and expected through Q1/14, the recent employment rise from about 150,000 net new jobs/month in summer to about 200,000/month since seems odd. It’s because firms are finally hiring because labor productivity growth has been close to zero for the past 15 months, down from 3.3%…

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Excellent Employment!

Hallelujah! The economy gained 244K jobs in April! Payroll data for Feb and March were also revised up by a combined 46K! Hiring in the private sector posted the largest increase in 5 years and was broad based! Ignore the rise in the unemployment rate to 9%. The bad news; gov’t employment fell 24K, avg…

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