Jobapalooza

Holy crap.

Employers added 290,000 jobs in April, the Labor Department said on Friday. It revised figures for February and March to show 121,000 more jobs were added than previously thought. The unemployment rate, however, rose to 9.9 percent as the size of the labor force increased.

Payrolls have now risen for four straight months.

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected nonfarm payrolls to rise 200,000 last month and the jobless rate to remain unchanged at 9.7 percent. The median forecast from the 20 most accurate forecasters was for a payrolls increase of 188,000.

Maybe Biden wasn't smoking something after all.   But we need to keep this level up for a year or more to make a dent.  It's that 9.9% that's bugging me.  It means a whole hell of a lot more people than 290,000 entered the job market last month, hopeful that there's going to be jobs again, or forced to look for them.  That means there's a pretty hefty chunk of people who have been sitting out on the job market altogether.

Now they are looking again.  This is why I said 250K new jobs a month simply isn't going to be enough.

[UPDATE]  Tyler Durden calls bullshit on the 290K anyway, saying it's much closer to 36K.