The labor market isn’t everything, but it’s a lot.
In fact, if you’re trying to get a handle on the big picture, you could do a lot worse than watch the economy’s capacity for minting new jobs.
With that in mind, the optimists have another stumbling block to conquer with today’s the release of April jobs data. Nonfarm payrolls increased by a slim 88,000 last month. For those who are still counting, that’s the smallest gain since November 2004.