PureStone Partners LLC

On Friday, the BLS released the Employment Situation report.  Everyone jumped on the news that the unemployment rate actually dropped for the first time in months.  While this is a great indicator, the basis for the jump was an increase in temporary help and healthcare jobs.  With Christmas looming,  I fear this is an artificial indicator as this is temporary help for a season that requires more than normal levels of help.  We need a number of industries adding jobs for this report to be positive, until then it is just a little less negative.

We lost 11,000 jobs compared to the 130,000 that Wall Street expected.  Or perhaps we have cut so many jobs the last few months, that we could not find a place to cut anymore.  I am also curious if this isn’t a little manipulated either in timing or impact as the President has been calling for job creation.

What I would really like to see out of Congress and the White House are very specific plans around job creation.  Just like a company saying we want to see 20% growth, yet not laying out the specific marketing, sales, and operational plans to get there it is all just hope.  And hope is not strategy.