Ace of Spades HQ Incites National Fixation on April Jobs Numbers

"Thanks to AoSHQ, everyone's suddenly treating us like rock stars," says senior CreditSuisse economist

Anxious Public Demands "More Cowbell!"

How much can we tease something so boring?:

[L]ast week's jobless claims won't impact the April employment report, which covers the last half of March and the first half of April. And economists are widely split on the key number in the report -- the number of new jobs added by employers. Reuters found a range of estimates from 60,000 to 250,00 new jobs among economists surveyed.

The unemployment rate is expected to stay unchanged at 5.7 percent, with a much tighter range of estimates -- the economists surveyed came in with either a 5.6 percent or 5.7 percent rate.

Vitner said the relatively low number of jobless claims is one of the things giving him confidence that the employment picture is seeing significant, permanent improvement.

Other economists, most likely malcontents and subversives, expect much smaller jobs-growth, figuring March's number was an aberration.

posted by Ace at 01:04 AM

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