April jobs report comes with no excuses left
Jobs are like oxygen to an economy. Lot of jobs gives the economy a little extra bounce to its step, while a job market in the doldrums adds up to angst and suffocates growth.
The question now facing the Federal Reserve, which wants to see a better labor market before it starts raising interest rates, is whether the weak numbers in March were transitory or signaled some kind of trouble ahead for a U.S. economy.
Last month's "Jobs Friday" was anything but jolly for Wall Street. The report was a big miss. The government reported that only 126,000 jobs were created in March, nearly 50% less than the 245,000 forecast by Wall Street.
The government and economists and even the Fed issued all sorts of excuses for the lousy number, which broke a 12-month string of job gains north of 200,000. They blamed the weakness on bad weather. They blamed it on a sharp rally in the U.S. dollar that made it tough for U.S. exporters to sell their more expensive goods abroad. They blamed it on the massive hit in the oil patch caused by a more than 50% drop in U.S. crude prices since last June's peak.
Well, now it will be harder to make excuses. The weather is warm. Oil has rallied sharply. And the dollar has given back a large chunk of its gains vs. the euro.
The April number has to come in strong. If it doesn't, it will spark fresh questions about what's wrong with the U.S. economy and how the Fed will react to an economy that is no longer creating 200,000-plus jobs a month.