QVMS - The Jobs Question Short-Term And Long-Term

• The March 2022 headline unemployment rate ticked down to 3.6 percent, just a tad higher than the 3.5 percent rate in February 2020, right before the pandemic hit. That 3.5 percent, in turn, was the lowest level in more than 50 years.
• The payroll gains number, which economists tend to focus on more closely than the unemployment rate, was 431,000, a bit lower than expected but still healthy in relation to historical norms.
• The question about the implications of a hot jobs market for inflation is important, because it is perhaps the biggest question mark in the Fed’s fairly benign assessment of the short-term environment.
• There are also some other considerations that should give one pause from banking too confidently on the recent growth cycle trends, and these have to do with longer-term structural issues in the jobs market.

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