>On Friday, April 2, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> 308,000 jobs added in March, best in four years. Very broad gains - and
>> not at temp firms.
>
>What do you think of the argument of this fellow at Wells Fargo:
>
>http://www.drsohn.com/04pres/sohn/2004/MarEmployment.pdf
>
>He says almost all the increase is accounted for by an increase in
>part-time jobs. Although oddly that doesn't stop the rest of his report
>from being strong and upbeat:
He's mixing the two surveys, household & establishment (which a lot of people do, even professionals). Employment rose 308,000 in the establishment survey (which excludes agricultural workers). Nonagricultural employment was down 44,000 in the household survey. Fulltime employment was down, and part-time for economic reasons was up. The ranks of the unemployed expanded, entirely because of the growth in people who lost their jobs permanently. (The unemployed are divided into: job losers [which is subdivided into temporary layoff and other, which means permanent], job leavers, new entrants, and re-entrants. If the U rate rose because people saw a strengthening in the labor market and decided to hop in, then the new entrants and re-entrants would have predominated, but that didn't happen.) But this brings the two surveys back into line, since household employment had been expanding while establishment employment was going nowhere. Over the long term, the two surveys move together, but in the short term, they sometimes diverge, though the degree of recent divergence has been unusual.