In March the US economy added a healthy 215K jobs, beating expectations and more importantly, pushing the average hourly earnings up by 0.3% on the month. Which, however, is curious because a cursory look at the job additions in the month reveals that nearly two-third of all jobs, and the three top categories of all job additions, were once again all minimum wages jobs.
- Education and Health: 51K
- Retail Trade: 48K
- Leisure and Hospitality: 40K
Just these three top sectors (as shown in the chart below) accounted for 65% of all job gains. This “growth” of minimum wage labor took place while some of the highest paying jobs, including mining and logging, manufacturing and transportation and warehousing all posted declines in March. The only silver lining was that construction jobs posted a healthy 37K bounce, while government “workers” added a solid 20K.
And, it bears repeating once again, that in a month in which all sentiment surveys showed a steady rebound in manufacturing, the US economy actually lost the biggest number of manufacturing workers since 2009.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1N03oB7 Tyler Durden