There is no way around it. The March jobs report is dismal. Economists had expected the economy to add around 200k jobs last month. The Labor Department reported this morning, however, that the economy added only 88k jobs. Democrat operatives in the media are quickly spinning the bad economic news as the fault of the sequester, i.e. automatic government spending cuts. A closer look at the data show the cuts had almost no impact on the job market.
Professional services, the sector of the economy most impacted by government contracts, increased hiring by 51k last month, in line with previous growth. A pullback in government spending would likely have seen this sector shed jobs. Except for a modest decline in the US Postal Service, government employment was little changed from last month.
The sequester cuts may still ultimately have an impact. If so, then the March jobs report is even worse than it seems, since any impact of the cuts hasn’t made its way to the job market yet. Still, its hard to see how cuts of around $40-80 billion would have anything more than a marginal impact on a $15 trillion economy.
The media is always quick to defend the Obama Administration on its terrible economic record. The excuses, however, are running out.
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