February jobs report

I'm afraid I'm going to have to cry foul on the Squawkbox talking heads. The BLS reported payroll employment down 36,000 in February and the unemployment rate unchanged at 9.7%. The analysts, who for weeks have been saying that the February blizzards could reduce the payroll number by tens of thousands, maybe over a hundred thousand, saw the number and concluded that the blizzard effect had been much negligible after all. Apparently they had fixed in their minds that the "true" number was likely to be zero; when the number came in less negative than they had predicted, they revised downward their estimate of the blizzard effect rather than revising upward their estimate of the true number. I thought the blizzard effect was going to be in the area of -100,000 - though who really knows - and so I thought the payroll employment number was going to be in the area of 0 to -100,000. There's no information in the jobs report to change my estimate of the blizzard effect, so I'm going to say the "true" number was around +64,000. In other words, a pretty good report and an indicator that the jobs recovery is progressing on schedule.

Evidence for a substantial blizzard effect is that the biggest job-losing sectors was construction at -64,000. Also, the stock market responded positively to the report - traders may be interpreting the report as suggesting the beginning of sustained employment growth.

Bob Barbera's view of the report was more positive than the other commentators - no surprise there. He noted that we've now had two consecutive months with employment growth in the household survey of 541,000 and 308,000 respectively. That's phenomenal news.

Mark Zandi moved the goalposts. He's conceded that March and April are going to be good months for employment, but the true test is May and June. I want to rewind the tape to a few months ago and see if he's being consistent with his past statements.

Meanwhile, the report revised December's and January's payroll numbers: in December the BLS now estimates that the economy lost 109,000 jobs rather than the 150,000 originally estimated, and in January the job loss is 26,000 rather than 20,000.