This article is from the archive of our partner 
.
Twitter economists lost their minds this morning as the monthly jobs report — released a day early due to the Fourth of July holiday — blew out expectations. The U.S. economy added 288,000 jobs last month, well above the expected number of 215,000. In addition, the unemployment rate dropped to 6.1 percent, the lowest it's been since September 2008 — the month Lehman Brothers collapsed and the economy began its long downward tailspin.
What's more, the report appeared to come without the usual caveats associated with good numbers. The participation rate remained mostly flat (so no impact on the number of people looking for work), hourly wages are up, and revisions to previous months were up.
In short, things are looking better than they have in a long time on the jobs front. And it was a nice corrective to the brief panic over the negative GDP growth of the first quarter. There's no doubt now that things are picking up steam, and the American economy continues its long, slow climb back..
Here's some more of the instant analysis:
Age 25-34 employment +224k MoM, +708k YoY, highest level since April, 2000. #householdformation
— Conor Sen (@conorsen) July 3, 2014
Correction to previous tweet: The 2.466m job gain is strongest of this recovery, but strongest since 5/2006, not 2000.
— Neil Irwin (@Neil_Irwin) July 3, 2014
Unemployment rate down for (very) good reasons: 407k more employed, 325k fewer unemployed.
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) July 3, 2014
Labor force up by 81K. Unemployed down by 325K. --> That's how you want the unemployment rate to drop.
— Michael R. Strain (@MichaelRStrain) July 3, 2014
Actual progress! We're 410,000 jobs into a real labor market expansion. pic.twitter.com/Sby07k3Urq
— Matt Phillips (@MatthewPhillips) July 3, 2014
There's not much "analysis" worth doing on this report. Was just bulletproof.
— Joseph Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) July 3, 2014This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.
