We're back to normal when it comes to unemployment numbers. That's right, the numbers are back to being wrong. In the last three days we got two reports on employment in March. First came the ADP number which is based upon the tens of millions of paychecks that the company generates. It showed an increase of close to 300,000 jobs in March. Today we got the government figures in the March employment report. It showed an increase of just under one hundred thousand jobs. The ADP number was much higher than estimates while the federal number was much lower than estimates. It certainly is clear that these numbers have a large margin of error, but the difference between the two figures is best described as "crazy". For the last year, at least, the federal employment numbers have seemed out of whack. The reports have been inconsistent to the point where one could wonder if they were being manipulated. I lean more towards incompetence as an explanation, but there is clearly something wrong.
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