First a Slowing in Job Losses, Then a Slow Recovery
Ben Bernanke sounded more optimistic on Tuesday than he has in a long time, and President Obama has talked about glimmers of hope. The stock market has risen almost 30 percent from its 2009 nadir.
On Friday morning, we will get the clearest sign yet of whether these glimmers are real. That’s when the Labor Department will release its monthly jobs report, the single most important economic indicator out there. As bad as the job market is, it no longer seems to be getting worse at an accelerating pace. In both February and March, the economy lost fewer than 670,000 jobs; in January, it had lost 741,000.
In past recessions, a slowdown in the rate of job loss has been a telling sign. A few months after that, the economy typically began growing again. The vicious cycle turned virtuous.
After a stretch of unrelenting bad news, dating to last year, the economic signals have been more mixed lately. In just the last week, data on home sales, construction and manufacturing has all been better than expected. This welcome news has caused many of us who are pessimistic about the economy’s near-term fortunes to reassess.
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