Our March trade deficit surged to the highest level in nearly 7 years as the ending of the west coast dock strike allowed ships that had been sitting offshore to unload. The March report on our international trade in goods and services showed that our seasonally adjusted goods and services deficit rose by $15.5 billion, or 43%, to $51.4 billion in March, from a revised February deficit of $35.9 billion, which had itself fallen by $6.8 billion from January while the strike was underway.
The April unemployment rate remained the same, yet unlike the past few months, the lack of change was not due to people dropping out of the workforce. Instead the participation rate ticked up a smidgen and more people were considered employed. The official unemployment rate is 5.4%, a tenth of a percentage point lower than last month.
ADP's proprietary private payrolls jobs report gives us another stunted employment preview by reporting a monthly gain of 169,000 private sector jobs for April 2015. Manufacturing jobs are truly a bad omen with 10,000 reported lost. Construction on the other hand is still in recovery with 23,000 April jobs gained.
According to Jay Bookman at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bill believes that the rich and and powerful aren't rich and powerful enough. But before we examine Bill O'Reilly bearing false witness again, let's take a quick assessment of cable TV news in general, and then see where Bill fits in to the scheme of things (pun intended) — or you can just skip to Jay's rebuttal.
According to the Boston Herald, upon the news of Senator Bernie Sanders running for President, Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “I’m glad to see him get out there and give his version of what leadership in this country should be. I think that Bernie Sanders is going to play out a vision for America, and that it is important for people to hear what he has to say.”
The April ISM Manufacturing Survey PMI had no change from March and is still a barely breathing growth of 51.5%. Manufacturing employment went into contraction as did inventories. Exports improved as did new orders and production. The worse news of the ISM manufacturing report is employment.
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