March NFP: +88K

Yikes, this morning’s jobs report was ugly. The economy added just 88,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in March, and 95,000 of those were private sector. Wall Street had been expecting a gain of 190,000 total, and 200,000 private sector jobs. This is the biggest NFP “miss” in more than three years. The labor force participation rate has fallen to its lowest point since 1979. The Dow is off 137 points right now. January’s NFP was revised higher to 29,000, and February by 32,000. The unemployment rate fell to 7.6%. There’s now an all-time record 101.7 million Americans over the age of 16 without a job. That’s an increase of 28 million since 1999.

Here’s a look at the plunge in the labor force participation rate:

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on April 5th, 2013 at 8:32 am

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