Apr 7

Written by: Russ Henke
4/7/2007 9:26 AM 

Yesterday, April 6, 2007, the US Labor Department reported that
180,000 new jobs were added to non-farm US payrolls in March.
This figure elevated the average number of new jobs added per
month in Q1 2007 to 151,000. While 151,00 per month may
seem large, and it is compared to the dismal record over the
last six years, 151,000 per month does not even keep pace
with the need for new jobs generated by normal US population
growth.

Another concern, of course, is just where the jobs are being
added. For example, in March, 75% of the new jobs were
tallied in services sectors: Retailers added 36,000;
educational & health care services expanded by 54,000;
leisure & hospitality services picked up 21,000, while
the government itself added 23,000.

These services sectors are not where the real wealth and
productivity of the nation are created. Indeed, the US
Manufacturing Sector, where real national wealth is created,
not only lost 16,000 jobs in March, but also March was the
ninth consecutive month of manufacturing job losses!

And things not getting better: In March, Ford's sales
dropped 9%, Chrysler sank 4.1% and General Motors
slid 4%. Moreover, new US factory orders in general
were down by 2.35% on average for January and
February 2007, the last two months when data are
available. And all this is during a time when the US
economy is supposedly humming? There’s no comfort
in realizing that the Manufacturing Sector is slightly
less sick now than during the extended 2001-2005
malaise, when millions of US manufacturing jobs were
forfeited.

(Lest the connection to MCAD and EDA appear vague
here, remember that Manufacturing is precisely the
sector most highly leveraged by MCAD and EDA
software tools).

The worsening swoon in US home sales also hurts
jobs in the Construction Sector. The Commerce
Department just reported that sales of new single-
family homes fell by 3.9% in February, the slowest
sales pace in nearly seven years.

Further, there is concern that even the Services
Sector itself may not hold up. The Institute for
Supply Management reported on April 4 that its
March index of US service sector activity came
in at the lowest reading since April 2003.

In reality, the situation hasn’t really been robust
for quite awhile. US productivity edged up only
2.1% in 2006, the weakest performance since 1997.
Growth in US gross domestic product has averaged
only 2.4% in the past three quarters. Worse, many
economists fear an actual recession is just ahead.
For example, by plugging today’s economic data
into the model developed by Federal Reserve
economist Jonathan Wright, the model concludes
that the odds of an impending recession remain
at ~50%.

Perhaps the above puts the March Jobs Data in
context.

Oh yes; regular gasoline here in CA is up to $3.48
per gallon as of April 7.