Once again on the first Friday of the month, the jobs report has been released. Each month millions of citizens, media, financial experts and stock brokers look to the jobs report to see how our job market is faring. With the release of the report, it seems as though April was not one of our better months. We failed to meet the already-low expectations for job creation and our unemployment rate seems to have dropped but a smidgen.
When financial experts drew up their expectations for the job growth of last month, they weren’t expecting much. They estimated that only 165,000 job were created in April and in reality, we only created 115,000 jobs. More upsetting is the 12,000 public sector jobs that were cut. To pour just a little bit of salt in the wounds of many, the unemployment rate lowered from 8.1 percent to 8.2 percent. To be sure, this isn’t a big drop at all, but it’s certainly not an improvement, which is what were hoping for.
All in all, the jobs report proved to be a bit disappointing not only to our progress, but to the stock markets as well. According to reports, the stock market fell sharply after this jobs report was released. Investors don’t like reports like this because it shows signs of a weary market. When you are investing large amounts of money in a market that is clearly weak, you are going to want to be very cautious. It seems that is exactly what they started doing. “The Standard & Poor’s 500 index slipped 21 points to 1,371, while the Nasdaq composite index fell 58 points to 2,966,” reports the Associated Press.
In terms of Obama’s campaign and the way he is perceived by the nation, this report doesn’t help him out too much. However, the unemployment rate has remained, for the most part, unchanged for quite some time and that is a world better than it getting worse, right? In a statement released by the White House, they state that the jobs report is a clear evidence that our economy is “continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, but much more remains to be done to repair the damage caused by the financial crisis and the deep recession.”
Something tells me we already knew this. What do you think of last month’s jobs report? Do you think you will be more cautious in your spending because of it? How does it make you feel about the job market? Tell me in the comments or tweet me @nicole_spark.
Add comment