Job Surge Spooks Markets as Unemployment Approaches the NAIRU

The BLS announced Friday that the US economy added 295,000 jobs in February, bringing the unemployment rate to 5.5 percent, a new low for the recovery. The leading stock indexes immediately plunged. The Dow lost 1.5 percent, the S&P 500 1.4 percent, and the NASDAQ 1.1 percent. Why  the negative reaction to such good news?

The answer may lie in an obscure economic indicator known as the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, or NAIRU. The NAIRU gets its name from the fact that when unemployment hits that level, the rate of inflation begins to accelerate. Market participants know that the Fed has a dual mandate to maintain full employment and price stability, and some of them interpret that to mean that it will begin to raise interest rates as soon as the unemployment rate hits the NAIRU. As the chart shows, that could happen any time now. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the NAIRU is currently 5.39 percent, within easy reach of February’s current unemployment rate of 5.5 percent. >>>Read more

Follow this link to view or download a brief slideshow with additional charts of the latest US employment situation