Jobs Data Goes From Bad To Worse

To add insult to injury, the prior week’s reading was revised up by 10,000 to 367,000.  The four-week average aims to smooth out the weekly data and that rose 4,250 to 368,500.

There is a one-week lag to the continuing jobless claims and that was reported as a drop of 98,000 to 3,251,000 in the prior week.

Maybe the Labor Department can blame Easter here or maybe not.  The prior week’s higher revision speaks for itself and the payrolls created in last week’s unemployment report came in at only about half of expectations.  The jobs data sure seems to be turning for the worse.

JON C. OGG