By Dees Stribling | MHN Online
Do monthly employment reports matter? They’re one of the most closely watched metrics of the economy, taking outsized importance especially before elections (inspiring borderline slanderous comments about the integrity of the Bureau of Labor Statistics just ahead of the 2012 election, for instance, when the reports seemed too good). Certainly the Federal Reserve asserts that it’s paying attention to them, if not on a monthly basis, than at least as the months form a pattern. So far this year growth in employment has been reasonably strong in most months (except March, at a net of 119,000), but not generally as strong as the run of monthly reports in the second half of 2014, which saw two months in a row over 300,000—and one of those, November, was over 400,000.
