Two new private-sector reviews of last month’s labor market show that the economy is still shedding jobs. The only good news is that the rate of loss continues to slow. But a loss is still a loss at this late date in the economic cycle, and today’s numbers suggest that Friday’s monthly update on jobs from the government may suffer another round of red ink, albeit in relatively mild form.
The ADP National Employment Report advises that nonfarm private payrolls in the U.S. slipped by 20,000 last month. "The February employment decline was the smallest since employment began falling in February of 2008," according to the accompanying press release.
Was winter weather to blame? Perhaps, although ADP minimizes that gremlin. Again quoting from the company's press release:
Two large blizzards smothered parts of the east coast during the reference period for the BLS establishment survey. The adverse weather had only a very small effect on today’s ADP Report due to the methodology used to construct it. However, the adverse weather is widely expected to depress the BLS estimate of the monthly change in employment for February, but boost it for March. Therefore, it would not be unreasonable to expect the BLS estimate for February (due out this Friday) to be less than today’s ADP Report even though the BLS estimate will include the hiring of temporary Census workers not captured in the ADP Report.
It's come to this: hoping for salvation from the Census Department. So it goes at a time when any scrap of good news, temporary or otherwise, is pounced upon as a pinpoint of light in the dark tunnel of job creation.
Meanwhile, another report from employment services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports more than 40,000 jobs were eliminated last month. That's comfortably below January's 70,000-plus cuts, the firm notes via CNNMoney.com. Nonetheless, it's hard not to notice that two independent reports today indicate the same general trend: another round of job losses for February.
If the Labor Department's update on Friday makes it three, February's retreat will mark nonfarm payrolls' net decline in 25 of the previous 26 months, according to the official government tally. Yes, it's getting better, which is to say the losses are diminishing, but the question still remains: When is net job growth coming? As we wrote last month, "the longer this drags on, the higher the odds that we're facing an even weaker post-recession job recovery than previously anticipated."
With each passing month of loss, the stakes are higher for the necessity of minting jobs. The real challenge isn't one of simply seeing a net gain on the payrolls ledger. That's coming, and perhaps soon. But what's needed is more than a statistical change, i.e., a lengthy stretch of large gains on the order of 200,000, 300,000 and more a month. Unfortunately, almost no one expects that's imminent. Yes, seeing 10,000, 50,000 or even 100,000 net new jobs will be refreshing (when it actually arrives), but that thimble of repair is no match for the tidal wave of 8 million-plus lost jobs since the Great Recession began in December 2007.
As troubling as this is, it's all the more problematic in a world that's just coming to terms with the debt and deleveraging that's weighing on the global economy. Greece and, increasingly, Britain are only the beginning of new world order. The U.S. is part of this infamous club too. And let's not forget the veteran of debt and deleveraging: Japan.
What are the implications for all this red ink? History suggests remaining humble in forecasting a quick and easy solution.
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