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April 15, 2009 at 08:00 PM
Overall
Either the markets are getting tired of all the bad employment news or simply looking beyond it. In either case, there was a muted reaction to the March employment report on the Street, according to Jeff Testerman of BrokerHunter.com.
The headline news is that this recession has brought about 5 million job losses since its inception in December of 2007. The rest of the news was bad enough too, with adjustments to January painting an even bleaker picture of recent job history; making that month the worst since 1949. Unemployment jumped by 0.4 percent up to 8.5 percent. After the carnage of January, though, the total job loss numbers and the declining pace of job loss in February and March actually seemed a bit tame, notes Testerman.
Employment is a lagging indicator of the economic situation and, at least for now, the stock market sees better times ahead.
Securities Industry
The securities industry lost another 6,600 jobs in March; about 0.8 percent of the total workforce. This brings the total number of workers to 812,000. This amounts to a reduction of 57,600 jobs or about 6.6 percent from peak employment in the industry in June of 2008.
