The new jobs report is pathetic

Okay so there were 211,000 more jobs in March than in February and unemployment dipped from 4.8 percent to 4.7 percent. The NY Times touts this today as “healthy” and says it means the economy is “picking up speed.” That’s literally true but misleading. If a car is going 5 miles an hour and it accelerates to 8 miles an hour, it’s picking up speed. But relative to most cars on the road it’s still moving like a tortoise. Look: The nation needs 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth, so we’re really talking about 61,000 new new jobs, which is pathetic. Compare March’s rate of job growth with what you normally see five years into an economic expansion. The current growth rate is the slowest on record – only about a fifth as fast as the average of all expansions since 1960.