NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The long nightmare of job losses appears to be just about over.
When the Labor Department reports its monthly employment readings for March on Friday, economists are forecasting a gain of 184,000 jobs.
If that happens, it would be only the second month with a positive reading since December of 2007, and the biggest jump in employment since March of that year, a good nine months before the official start of the recession.
But even if the economists are right in their forecast, they caution not to get too excited about a report of a big jump in jobs. There are a number of short-term factors likely to distort the reading.
Storms in the middle of February caused a number of people to be out of work during the week that the Labor Department does its monthly survey of employers, so their return to work would be counted as a gain in the March reading. Some estimates say more than 100,000 of the gain could be weather-related.
Even more significantly the Census Bureau has started to hire the more than 1 million temporary workers it will need this year to complete the once-in-a-decade headcount of the U.S. population. That also could add more than 100,000 jobs to payroll in March.
Modest gains ahead. Even if the March reading is built on such ephemeral gains, many economists say they're seeing signs that the labor market is at a more significant turning point, and that employers are about to start adding jobs.
But most believe that while the labor market may have turned a corner, it's likely to see only modest improvements the rest of the year.
"This is the beginning of things getting better, but it's just getting better slowly," said Barry Ritholtz, CEO and director of equity research at Fusion IQ.
"We're not looking for 300,000-500,000 monthly job gains we saw in the 90s. It's going to be more in the 50,000 to 200,000 range the rest of the year." .................
http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/01/news/economy/jobs_outlook/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
Hmmm........
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