There’s no one around on the stock market to celebrate, but this morning’s jobs report was fantastic. (Unless you’re Barry Ritholtz, of course, in which case it’s “not a big number”.) Not only did March payrolls rise by a very strong 180,000, but both February and January were revised upwards as well, and unemployment is now down to 4.4%; economists had actually been expecting it to rise. Hell, there was even a rise in construction employment, although it didn’t quite make up for the fall in February.
Bonds are down half a point or so, stock futures are up a little, and Fed fund futures are rapidly giving up any hope of a rate cut.
Standard disclaimer, here: although the monthly payrolls report gets a lot of press and can send markets gyrating wildly, the margin of error is enormous, and sober observers have started using words like “meaningless” and “random”. All the same, the bulls have a smile on their faces this morning. Maybe it’s because they’ve been proved right; on the other hand, maybe it’s just because a lot of them have the day off.