Commentary

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+====== US employment -- no clear departure from existing trends ======
+Jul 2012 by Jim Fickett.
+//Although the employment situation might be deteriorating, none of the big trends has shown more than noise-level changes just yet.//
+It is very easy to read too much into small changes in economic indicators.  For example, it may seem worrisome that the unemployment rate is still where it was in March.  But seen in context, there is no evidence that this is a significant departure from the longer-term slow decline:
+{{public:u3u62012-06.png?direct&480}}
+Similarly, the poor showing of the month-to-month changes in non-farm payrolls might be a sign of a genuine slowdown.  Or they might not be.  The small squiggles of monthly variation have not really departed from the larger trend of sluggish recovery:
+{{public:us_nfp_sa_recess2012-06.png?direct&480}}
+(All the usual graphs have been updated in the Reference section; see [[public:US employment]] and its sub-pages.