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"This report is solidly positive for the economy: bit by bit the pieces of recovery are falling into place. No doubt, it will reinforce expectations that the Federal Reserve should either call an early end to its quantitative-easing programme of bond purchases (now scheduled to end in June), or start raising interest rates soon. That indeed was the message a bevy of hawkish Fed presidents delivered in the past week.
That seems premature, for two reasons. First, other economic data is not as upbeat as employment. Recent reports on durable goods, housing and so on all suggest the economy is growing at just a 2% to 2.5% annual rate in the current quarter, well below the 3.5% to 4% rates that many forecasters were anticipating for the year as a whole. What explains the divergence? For one thing, while employers are hiring more workers, they haven’t added to their hours in recent months. Total hours worked grew at only a 2% annual rate in the first quarter. Another explanation might be that productivity growth has ground to a halt, which is neither surprising, given its rather feeble performance to date, nor bad. Nonetheless, in sum the data point to an economy growing at or slightly above its potential rate, but hardly surging, which is likely to be the pattern for the next several years while deleveraging proceeds apace. If underlying demand remains stubbornly sluggish, because of higher oil prices for example, employment could peter out again, as it did a year ago.
The other reason for caution is pay. Average hourly earnings were flat last month, and are up just 1.7% from a year earlier, half the rate at which they were growing before the recession. Inflation expectations have risen a bit, but there is no sign that workers have been able to leverage their concern about higher food and petrol prices into higher wages. The surge in oil prices is eating into disposable income and being felt in consumer spending."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/04/americas_recovery
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