Economics Update

Scare Pic of the day courtesy of Calculated Risk

Today's lede has to be the unemployment numbers with non farm payrolls dropping 663,000 in March and unemployment (U-3) hitting 8.5%.

It should be noted that if you use the broader U-6 metric, then unemployment is 15.6% up 6.3% from last March's 9.3%.

We also have the number of involuntary part-time workers increasing from climbed by 423,000, to 9.0 million, and the contraction of service industries is accelerating.

The best metric of the employment situation may be the employment-population ration, and it fell to 59.9%, the lowest level since 1985.

BTW, remember when I posted about UK house prices going up for the first time since 2007 in March? Not sop much, alternate data shows another fall in prices.

The dollar rose on a flight to safety after the crappy jobs report, and oil fell for the same reason.