Great chart on jobs numbers, and more...

While Congressional Republicans are spinning themselves sick today disparaging the encouraging economic news that 162,000 jobs were created in March, including 123,000 jobs in the private sector -- desperately trying to justify their near unanimous opposition to the President’s stimulus program that has since created over 2 million jobs and continuing to shrug off any responsibility for enabling the failed Bush policies that led to the Great Recession in the first place – see below roundup of quick takes from actual economic experts…

CHART SOURCE:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_04/023170.php

Associated Press: 162,000 Jobs Added in March, most in 3 years; Private employers added 123,000 jobs, the most since May 2007

“There’s a lot of good news in this report,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida, who had the closest forecast for payrolls. “We’re clearly on the recovery path. We expect to see this continue to build. We’re on our way.”

"The job market is slowly but surely turning the corner from job declines to job gains. Most encouraging is the improvement across more industries," said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at forecaster Moody's Economy.com. "With corporate profits and stock prices up strongly, hiring will revive in coming months."

“Good Friday is apparently a good release date for the U.S. employment report. The last time, the BLS published the employment report on a Good Friday was in April 2007. Back then, nonfarm payrolls rose another strong 239,000 and the unemployment rate fell to a cyclical low of 4.4%. While the overall economic situation couldn’t be more different this time, today’s employment report is the strongest in more than two years. – Harm Bandholz, Unicredit

"While the unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent, this was a fundamentally good report, indicative of a slightly improving economy, and potentially, an earlier emergence from the job-less recovery than had been previously anticipated," said Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics LLC of Austin, Texas.

"The labor market has turned," Nigel Gault an economist at IHS Global Insight. “Today’s report suggests that the economy has broken through to sustained job creation.”

"It looks like the recovery has finally reached the point where it is actually boosting employment," said Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist with Capital Economics of Toronto.

"It's the first month of really solid growth," said Bart van Ark, chief economist at the Conference Board, a business-membership and research organization in New York. "We see the job gains spreading across the economy."

"The labor market is on the cusp of generating a sustained but moderate increase in new jobs," said Steven Wood, economist at Insight Economics, in a note.

The top economist at the U.S. Treasury Department said the job growth suggests the labor market is stabilizing and that federal policies targeting the jobs crisis are working. "The report confirms that our policies are helping to improve the jobs picture," said Treasury Chief Economist Alan Krueger, although he noted the report at the same time "makes us aware of how much damage the recession has caused."

“The most salient insight to be gleaned from these data is the net gain excluding weather and census effects, and that is positive. Despite the distortions in these data, the labor market definitely improved in March, and the trend in the payroll statistics is decidedly positive. The March nonfarm payroll data was slightly weaker than expected and the revision to the prior two months, January and February, was positive.” –Ray Stone, Stone & McCarthy

“Jobs grew 162,000 in March with important signals of improvement in services (trade/transportation, business services, leisure & hospitality) and manufacturing (up 3 months in a row) sectors.”– John Silvia, Wells Fargo

“Particularly encouraging was the increase in hiring in the service sector, which always lags the overall recovery. We attach particular importance to hiring in the trade and transport sector which are leading indicators of a resurgence of growth. Recent manufacturing data strongly suggest that increasing production should stimulate future job growth and three consecutive months of new hiring in the trade and transport sector do provide a useful leading indicator that the economy should see a modest boost in private sector employment going forward. – Joseph Brusuelas, Brusuelas Analytics

“The third increase in jobs in the past five months indicates that the labor market has begun to stabilize. The increases were broad-based with 60 percent of the industries hiring. Manufacturing has turned the corner adding 45,000 jobs so far this year. More than 58 percent of the manufacturers have increased employment along with more overtime and hours worked. Temporary employment, a good sign of an improving labor market, continues to increase.” – Sung Won Sohn, Smith School of Business and Economics

Source:

Our friends at www.AmericansUnitedforChange.org