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Unemployment Rate Drops to Lowest Level since 2007

The March jobs report was released by the BLS this morning.  The real news is that the economic recovery continues.  In terms of data, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.5 percent, the lowest level since May 2007 (nearly ten years!).  That is the good news. But while the unemployment rate dropped, the number of jobs added was less than recent trends.  In March, 98,000 new jobs were added, but this is significantly below the average of 202,000 for the past five years. Two words of caution are in order.  First, we don't want to draw significant conclusions from a single jobs report.  On a month-to-month basis, there is a lot of noise in the data.  It is best to consider long-run trends.  In this case, the long-run trend on employment is certainly positive.

Second, it is still to early to credit or blame our new government leaders for any economic economic conditions that may show up in the data.

Posted by Lee Coppock on April 07, 2017 in Unemployment
 

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