Larry Kudlow was on the Maria Bartiromo show right after the #'s dropped. He basically said, "Ignore the report". Focus on the jobs that WERE added (something like 288K) and that the ADP and other indicators were way above that reported number. Larry kinda-sorta hinted that the # was political, and that the Democrats would use it to try and bump their current spending plans up from the $4 Trillion towards a $6 Trillion number.
Per the discussion above on the pay-to-stay home employees, the number that was ABOVE the actual jobs added was in the sector that included waiter/waitresses, etc. That sector added 311K jobs, but there were actual losses in other key segments (80 or 88K in manufacturing) that were of bigger interest to Kudlow. Apparently, those jobs ARE being filled and fewer of those folks were staying home and collecting the swollen unemployment compensation plans available to them.
I don't necessarily agree with everything Kudlow says, but he's been following this stuff or a long, long time and has a different perspective than I do. It will be interesting to see how Congress reacts to this in the days and weeks ahead, and to see if there are any "adjustments" made to this report going forward (it's not uncommon to have these snapshot reports adjusted downstream). Still, one helluva "swing and a miss" with respect to forecast vs. actual by this administration.
finance.yahoo.com
