Today’s jobs report for December reminds (as if we needed reminding) that the economic “recovery” will be slow, sluggish and prone to setback from time to time.
Nonfarm payrolls were lighter by 85,000 last month, according to this morning’s monthly employment update from the Department of Labor. That’s a blow for quite a number of economic projections, some of which predicted a small gain. MarketWatch.com, for instance, reported that a poll of economists had predicted a rise of 15000 in the December nonfarm payrolls number.
There is some good news in today’s report: the slight retreat in November jobs that was originally reported (-11,000) was revised upward to a feeble gain of 4,000. Of course, in a labor force of 130 million, such changes are insignificant. Indeed, nothing short of potent growth in the labor market over an extended multi-year period is required to repair the damage from the Great Recession. Even a sustained rise of 300,000 new jobs a month would take more than 2 years simply to return the labor force to its pre-recession high. Unfortunately, almost no one is predicting such a rosy scenario and there’s nothing in today’s numbers to suggest such a positive turn of events any time soon.