Last Friday’s Jobs news is a big win with 288,000 new jobs added.
This is far ahead of projections by analysts. Also it is key to see how the February and March numbers were revised up. The average number through the first four months of 2014 is 210.500.. Anything above 200k per month supports a sustainable economic recovery.
For 2013 the average was around 195,000 job so it is a nice steady trend. No question that the extreme weather conditions that plagued much of the country in January and February had an impact at that time.
Some of the highlights in the report include 32,000 new jobs in construction which includes new home starts.
75,000 in Professional and Business Services. That is key for our regional economy near Boston as this includes many technology workers and labor that supports these kind of businesses.
35,000 up in retail and you can see how that ties in greater consumer confidence.
24,000 jobs were created in temporary staffing, a space that we know very well. This is a strong sign of confidence as many employers will use the temporary or temporary to direct model when considering making more strategic hires to their staff.
Small Business which is a key driver of our economy add 82,000 new jobs and 60% of that was done by companies at or below 20 employees
Fox 25’s Bob Ward sat down with our own Brendan King on Friday to go through the numbers. See his interview here: