Jobs -- February 5, 2016

When President Obama's mouthpiece, NBC, describes it as a "mixed report," just how bad was it? Really, bad. Really, really bad. And the market is letting us know how bad the jobs report. Remember, this is n expanding economy. Supposedly. This is an economy six years into a recovery. This is an economy with trillions of dollars in stimulus, and by some accounts, an economy facing $19 trillion in debt.

So, what was the "jobs number"? 151,000.

That's bad.

BloombergBusiness spins it, of course, suggesting that the jobs number -- how's this for optimism -- well, at least the numbers suggest it's less likely we will go into recession this year. They're setting the bar pretty low. A few months ago, the talk was that "strong" jobs numbers suggested the economy was likely to expand. Now, the sentiment has changed: "well, the economy might not expand much, but at least we may not go into recession.

Job growth settled into a more sustainable pace in January and the unemployment rate dropped to an almost eight-year low of 4.9 percent, signs of a resilient labor market that’s causing wage growth to stir.

The 151,000 advance in payrolls, while less than forecast, largely reflected payback for a seasonal hiring pickup in the final two months of 2015, Labor Department figures showed Friday. The jobless rate fell to the lowest level since February 2008. Hourly earnings rose more than estimated after climbing in the year to December by the most since July 2009.

Others would argue that with so few jobs and yesterday's report of record number of layoffs that the 4.9% unemployment rate (a slight tick down) simply means fewer people looking for jobs.

The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey called for a 190,000 gain in overall payrolls last month, with estimates ranging from gains of 142,000 to 260,000.

I assume it was the White House that estimated a 260,000 increase.