Strong Jobs Report For March*
Amid the continued global market downturn (particularly US markets and dollar downturns ), supporters of the President got some good news. After two months of lower month-to-month job growth, initial reporting for March shows an increase in the number of new jobs. From NPR :
U.S. employers added 228,000 jobs in March. That’s about twice the number added the previous month, when revised figures show employers added 111,000 jobs. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2% from 4.1% in February, as 232,000 people joined or rejoined the workforce. [Source ]
Given how much Trump apologists are sharing this news, it’s great to know that we can once again trust the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s amazing how easily that faith comes when someone they like is in the White House.
As someone who has trusted those numbers (and their revisions) across both parties, job growth now and in the past is, of course, good news. Here’s to hoping that if revisions happen, they will only revise up. Only time will tell.
All that said, it sure seems like a lot of Trump supporters and the President himself are making a lot of causation/correlation errors in their interpretation of this news:
Granted, “IT’S ALREADY WORKING” can be interpreted in many ways (I look forward to our Trump whispers explanations). But coupled with “HANG TOUGH” (i.e., don’t panic over the last 48 hours), it sure seems like part of the “IT’s” that is “ALREADY” (as in right now) “WORKING” are the Tariffs that dropped two days ago.
Unless you are willing to advance the theory that companies started to hire in March based on market-crushing tariffs that would be implemented on the second day of the following month, this really feels like a correlation error.
Then again, I guess only time will tell. One good thing about the Trump tariffs is that the President had the presence of mind to start them on the second day of April. That means, except for April 1st, this month’s jobs report will almost exclusively include data from what happens after the tariffs were announced.
I’m wondering if any of our readers want to bet that the April jobs report will show the same level of growth as this month.