Unemployment stays at 9.7% - jobless rate holds steady.

At least that is what the headlines read, but did it really?  According to the BLS, they sure did, but if you look deeper then the picture is a bit muddied. 

The following industries either shed jobs or remained steady:
- Construction
- Information
- Transportation and ware-housing
- Manufacturing
- Retail trade

The following industries gained jobs:
- Temporary help
- Health care
- Federal government (15,000 new people for Census work)

So the industries that actually produce something tangible and contribute to the productivity of the country are either all stagnant or continuing to shed.  Yet the industries that produce nothing but service or rely on shrinking hours are trending up.  Not a good trade-off.  Losing private sector while gaining public sector jobs should make anyone cringe. 

Furthermore the trend from full time employees to part time employees or the amount of hours per worker is continuing to deteriorate.  BLS will have you believe that it is the fault of the snow.

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls declined by 0.1 hour to 33.8 hours in February. The manufacturing workweek for all employees dropped by 0.4 hour to 39.5 hours, and factory overtime decreased by 0.2 hour over the month. In February, the average workweek for production or nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls fell by 0.2 hour to 33.1 hours; the workweek fell by 1.0 hour in construction, likely reflecting the unusually severe winter storms.

No, not the snow. The important aspect to remember is that in the land of Fed bubbles and business expansion due to funny money employment goes through familiar patterns.  That is as businesses realize the need for contraction they begin to radically shrink their investments, operations and size.  The need for people naturally drops.  However our government is doing everything in it's power to prevent this contraction from happening, because extending and pretending is easier and promotes political longevity. 

Beyond the fluff and tailored government numbers the reality is that people are still unemployed, frustrated and becoming poorer.  A measure that I prefer to follow is called U-6, which includes all the folks that have given up searching for jobs.  U-6 unfortunately is not a 'pretty' number and is not mentioned or discussed.  However you can find it in the report on page 27.   The definition is as follows:

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.

What did U-6 do?  It went up by .3% and is now at 16.8%! This is only .6% lower than it's all time high from October of 2009.  But please, ignore the man behind the curtain.  U-3 is at 9.7% so everyone remain calm. 

Before the proverbial fecal matter hits the fan and unemployment (U-3) gushes up to 12%+ there will be continued and visible reduction in actual working hours.  So we can all rest easy knowing that people are happily employed and ignore the fact that these very same people are working less, making less and have reduced purchasing power.   Once these 15,000 census employees finish their task, the real employment situation will present itself.  For now the major news media outlets can enjoy their pretty headlines.