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The Economy Adds 200,000? What The Jobs Reports Means

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Economists, based on consensus numbers, believe the eocnomy added 200,000 new jobs in February. ADP reported a 216,000 jump in private payrolls during the month. Challenger Gray said corporate layoffs dropped. Weekly jobless claims have generally been good

But, there will be ongoing debate  about what the February employment report says, no matter what the number. If it is below the expected 200,000, economists will say the economy has slowed–perhaps because of gas prices or a failure to cut payroll taxes more. If the number is much higher than expected, many experts will say the recovery is now complete and GDP will be up 3% or better for the balance of the year. Some others will say that the only reason for an improvement is that cold weather which usually settles in across the norther tier of states in Winter never settled. Even good news has detractors.

 

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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