February 2012 Employment Report

There’s some mixed news to report on the employment front, with last week’s employment report showing a slight uptick in the headline unemployment rate caused by a reduction of 107k jobs:

That looks more like statistical “noise” to me, especially since DOS’ seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is well below the unadjusted rate as is my own seasonally adjusted estimate:

So as far as employment is concerned, despite the yo-yo movements in trade and industrial production, the economy is still humming along a little above potential.

On a side note, the DOS report still reads like it was generated by Google translator. Surely they can get somebody to do proper translations – it’s not that expensive.

Technical Notes:

February 2012 Employment Report from the Department of Statistics (warning: pdf link)