Welcome back to Friday. This is the Breitbart Business Digest weekly wrap of business and economic news, where we strive to increase output despite no increases in our newsletter’s payroll.
This week, Jobs Friday returned with a jump scare entrance after taking several months off due to government shutdowns. The government said that your bosses are making you work harder and keeping a larger share of the upside for themselves—and this has been going on for years. Energy prices soared and stocks had a volatile week as investors monitored the situation in Iran, which President Trump started bombing seven days ago.
The Jobs Report Bombs
The range of estimates for this week’s jobs report was unusually wide going into Friday. Econoday’s estimates ranged from a gain of 35,000 to a huge increase of 125,000. That typically suggests that there’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s happening in the labor market. As it turns out, even that range was not wide enough to capture what actually happened.
The Labor Department said that the economy shed 92,000 jobs in February, and it revised down the estimates for January and December by a total of 69,000. December went from an estimated gain of 48,000 to a loss of 17,000. While January still stands out as a strong month for hiring, with jobs rising 126,000, there’s no escaping the conclusion that this was an ugly report.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member