Inflation is a potential risk. It's not a reality yet. |
It certainly too soon to be sure, but I think it's a very strong indication that hiring is getting on track. |
It fits in with the picture that the labor market is turned, inflation has turned and in a few more months they'll be tightening. |
It is a bit of a surprise. |
It reflects that people mostly still have their jobs, still have their money and people are still buying houses. |
It takes something on the order of 150,000 new jobs a month to absorb the natural increase in the labor force. As long as we keep getting smaller positive numbers than that, the unemployment rate should be trending up rather than down. |
It would be kind of like when they put through a substantial emergency rate cut when the market crashed in 1987. I don't think it is evidence of panic to treat what happened yesterday as an emergency. It's an emergency on many levels. |
It's another in the long series of the no-news-is-good-news story about inflation. |
It's clearly good news. Clearly it means that the Fed is still free to ease as much as they are inclined to. |
It's hard to put this all together. |
It's really a benign number, so no real new news. |
It's reassuring. It is true that the consumer is the only part of the economy that's keeping the expansion going right now. |
It's shocking that you're looking at almost no growth anywhere else. |
It's still the same story, that there really is no inflation problem at this stage of the cycle. |
It's too early to call a turn in the trend, so Alan Greenspan can't relax completely, but it's certainly the kind of report that will help him sleep better. There's still no sign of wage inflation and we seem to be heading for a soft landing: a smooth slowdown into sustainable non-inflationary growth. |