Net Job Creation by Industry through March 2017

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment report released Friday was another example of why we should not be fixated on a single month’s result. Month on month this was a dismal report with a net increase of only 98,000 jobs, well below analyst’s expectations. To make matters worse, January and February were revised down by a total of 38,000 jobs. Using a three month moving average (3MMA), the result for March was 178,000, down only 20,000 from February and exactly the same as January. The average monthly increase in the six months of Q4 2016 and Q1 2017 was 177,000. Moody’s concluded that the spring weather played a significant role in the last three months and commented, “March payroll gains came in with a thud. A weaker pace was expected following two strong months that were pumped up by the mild winter weather, but the downshift in March was greater than forecast. The shift forward to the beginning of the year of hiring that would have occurred in March was compounded by March’s unusually harsh weather, which further depressed weather-dependent industries.”

Figure 1 shows the 3MMA of the number of jobs created monthly as the brown bars since 2000. These numbers are seasonally adjusted by the BLS.