Every year we say that March “comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” But this year, February was the troublesome month, which came in with a Deep South snowstorm and went out with a Hawaiian tsunami.
The extreme weather across the continent probably cost some Americans work, or at least the chance to look for work, according to government officials. Their best estimate of the employment losses for February 2010 will be announced Friday morning.
The “jobs report” typically roils the stock market and currency trading exchanges, so officials are usually mum about the numbers until the official release of the data at 8:30 AM Eastern time on the first Friday of the month. But Larry Summers, the president’s top economic advisor, has been leaking the news that the upcoming report is going to be bad, and he is blaming it on the weather. “The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics,” Summers told business news outlet CNBC.
Weather-related distortions to government statistics may be far from the minds of the unemployed residents in greater Lawrence and southern New Hampshire. Beset with a wave of foreclosures and bankruptcies, people around here are hoping for a more permanent ecomonic spring, one with the return of enough jobs so that most folks can pay their bills. Lets hope we see it soon.
Editor’s note: The jobs report released this morning said that 36,000 American jobs were lost in February, and that the national unemployment rate held steady at 9.7%, numbers that were generally considered to be a little better than expected. — DB