The consensus estimates for the March jobs report is that non-farm payrolls improved by 160,000 which would decrease the unemployment rate a one-tenth of a percent or two-tenths. That would be in contrast to two years of job losses each month with one tiny exception in January. The March figures will be distorted by the number of people being hired to perform the Census. These new workers, put on the federal payroll and their wages covered by the taxpayers, won’t fool economists although the numbers may look good to the general public.
According to Reuters,Fed Chief Bernanke told Congress last week that a jobs recovery might not be happening. He said that it is possible that “the productivity gains were greater than we thought they would be when firms were able to cut their work forces and still maintain output.”

The recovery is sluggish by almost every measure including manufacturing activity, consumer sentiment, or housing and credit card defaults. The only part of the economy that is healthy is the stock market. That cannot be minimized for a number of reasons not the least of which is that people’s net worth and retirement accounts are improving and the coffers of pension funds are going up in most cases as well.  Harvard may not have to close its campus in January 2011.

But, the stock market’s impact on improving the job market is indirect at best. Even a company which benefited from the surge in equity prices so that it has more cash equivalents and short-term investments than it had last year may simply sit on those assets the way that Apple (AAPL) and Cisco (CSCO) have. It is unspent money that investors may want but boards won’t give them. What could be a benefit to the economy is stuffed into the corporate mattresses. The ten largest tech companies in America have a combined total of more than $200 billion in cash.