742,000 Jobs Lost In March
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Economy, Jobs
Right now it’s the biggest one month drop in American history, and it’s up by about 50,000 over February’s record numbers.
Private employers cut jobs by a record 742,000 in March versus a 706,000 revised cut in February that was originally reported at 697,000 jobs, said ADP, which has been carrying out the survey since 2001.The big drop foreshadows a huge decline in the non-farm payroll reading in the government’s employment report that will be released on Friday, some analysts said.
“It’s a terrible number. It is almost a loss of three quarters of a million jobs which is possibly the highest we have seen so far over the length of this crisis,” said Matt Esteve, foreign exchange trader with Tempus Consulting in Washington.
But let’s remember…employment numbers are a trailing indicator. So with the stock market going back up and a few economic indicators getting better, this could represent a bottom.
Still, I wouldn’t hold my breath when you have such a steep drop from one month to the next. Because usually what you’d see is a couple months where the numbers remained steady. We thought we saw that back in January, but that was due to the holiday season spending. After that time, people stopped spending and if they stop spending then companies are forced to cut staff. No real way around that.
More as it develops…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 and is filed under Economy, Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:28 pm
One thing that occurs to me is the possibility that the old “lagging indicator” meme can break down if there is enough of a drop in employment in our current system where 70% of economic activity depends on consumer spending. If you have a large enough ongoing reduction in the number of working people (As shown not only by the monthly number of jobs lost but by how many are still unemployed, which is huge now.) then you reduce the ability of consumers to spend. A large enough number could readily lead to a hard to break downward spiral.