My finance view

A plunge in Facebook’s stock didn’t faze the broader U.S. market Monday. U.S. stocks bounced back from their worst week of the year on renewed optimism that European leaders would find a way out of the sovereign debt crisis.

The Dow posted its biggest gain in over a month, while the S&P 500 delivered its best performance in over two months. The tech-heavy Nasdaq enjoyed its best gains of the year.

"I think it’s just more of a relief rally after being down so many sessions in a row," said Dave Rovelli, managing director at Canaccord Adams. "People are looking for stocks that have sold off a bit."

Over the weekend, the Group of Eight nations met and reaffirmed their commitment to keeping Greece in the eurozone. And two opinion polls released in Greece reportedly put the pro-bailout New Democracy party ahead of the anti-austerity Syriza party.

The combination of the G8 and the poll results was enough to boost sentiment across world markets, with European and Asian stocks eking out gains and the euro holding steady at around $1.28 against the U.S. dollar.

Paul Zemsky, head of asset strategies for ING Investment Management, said the rally was the result of "a smidgen of good news in an oversold market."

"You had a tremendous amount of pessimism, but nothing bad came out of Greece this weekend," he said. "There’s some optimism that perhaps the Greek people are realizing how damaging it would be for them to leave [the eurozone]."

The Dow Jones industrial average () rose 135 points, or 1.1%. Blue chips, including Caterpillar (, Fortune 500), Boeing (, Fortune 500) and IBM (, Fortune 500) led the gains.

The S&P 500 () gained 21 points, or 1.6%, and the Nasdaq () rose 68 points, or 2.5%.

Shares of Facebook () plunged as much as 13.7%, before finishing down 11% at $34.03, well below the $38 initial public offering price.

The sharp drop "weighed heavily" on markets at the start of trading, said Anthony Conroy, head trader at ConvergEx Group, noting that the tech-heavy Nasdaq briefly slid into negative territory.

What’s next for Greece

But trading might be choppy this week as worries about Europe will continue to dominate. Elisabeth Afseth, a fixed income analyst with Investec in London, said the weeks leading up to Greece’s June 17 election are likely to be volatile for both equity and bond markets.

An informal summit of European leaders is scheduled for Wednesday.

Despite Thursday’s bounce, stocks are still down considerably in May, on track for the worst monthly losses since September. The Dow has finished in the red on all but three of the 15 trading days this month.

The blue chip index and the S&P 500 are off more than 5% in May, while the Nasdaq is more than 6% lower.

U.S. stocks closed lower Friday, after the euphoria surrounding Facebook’s Friday IPO had worn off. All three indexes clocked their worst weekly losses of the year last week.

World markets: European stocks closed with significant gains. Britain’s FTSE 100 () climbed 0.9%, the DAX () in Germany rose 1.1% and France’s CAC 40 () jumped 1%.

Asian markets ended mixed. The Shanghai Composite () edged 0.2% higher and Japan’s Nikkei () ended up 0.3%. The Hang Seng () in Hong Kong shed 0.2%.

Companies: Yahoo (, Fortune 500) and China’s Alibaba Group have agreed to a $7.1 billion deal, in which the Chinese Internet giant will buy back half of Yahoo’s 40% stake in the company.

JPMorgan loss: It’s going to get worse

Speaking at a Deutsche Bank conference, JPMorgan Chase (, Fortune 500) CEO Jamie Dimon said the firm would suspend its stock buyback program but would keep its dividend.

Lowe’s (, Fortune 500) reported better-than-expected earnings but issued mixed guidance. The stock fell 10%.

Campbell Soup (, Fortune 500) posted a slight decline in earnings per share but performed slightly better than forecasts. The stock fell 2%.

Some social media stocks fell along with Facebook, though not as steeply. Zynga () fell less than 1% and LinkedIn () declined just 2%. But Groupon () surged 7%.

Currencies and commodities: The dollar posted modest gains versus the Japanese yen, but slipped slightly against the euro and the British pound.

How Iran could double its oil output

Oil for June delivery rose $1.09 to settle at $92.57 a barrel.

Gold futures for June delivery dropped $3.20 to settle at $1,588.70 an ounce.

Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury fell Monday morning, pushing the yield up to 1.75% from the 1.70% level late Friday.  

Source

Payday loans online from $100 to 1000 loan payday with no faxing. Get cash advance loans now. Click here for immediate funding.

Barnes-Jewish Hospital agreed to pay back $725,185 to a Medicare contractor, according to a government audit released Monday showing that the hospital overbilled for patient care.

According to the audit, the hospital received $660 million in 2009 and 2010 for care provided to patients with Medicare, government health insurance for people who are older than 65 or have a disability.

As part of a regular review of those payments, government auditors checked 240 claims that were deemed at-risk for billing errors, including those with payments above $150,000 and inpatient stays of zero or one day. The auditors found errors in 58 of the claims that resulted in overpayments of $392,829 for outpatient and $332,356 for inpatient charges. Barnes-Jewish “did not have adequate controls to prevent incorrect billing of Medicare claims,” according to the report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General quick payday loans.

The billing errors involved calculation mistakes on dosages of injected drugs, unreported credits from device manufacturers, duplicate or incorrect coding and incomplete doctors’ orders.

The mistakes were attributed to human error and problems coordinating doctor signatures, dates and times on the paperwork.

The hospital refunded the full amount to Wisconsin Physician Services, a Medicare contractor, according to a letter dated March 30 from hospital President Richard Liekweg.

Barnes-Jewish also bought new billing software and trained employees on Medicare coding, Liekweg wrote.

Source

Stop the guess work, get your 100% free credit score and report today and know exactly what's on all three of your free credit reports

McDonald’s Corp. says a key revenue figure rose in April as strength in the U.S. and U.K. helped offset weakness in Japan. But results missed analyst expectations and McDonald’s shares fell 2 percent in premarket trading.

The world’s largest hamburger chain says global sales rose 3.3 percent at stores open at least 13 months. But Thomson Reuters says analysts expected a 4.1 percent rise.

The figure is key metric because it excludes the impact of newly opened stores.

The figure rose 3 payday loans guaranteed no fax.3 percent in the U.S., driven by its new extra value menu offerings such as 20-piece Chicken McNuggets.

The sales figure rose 3.5 percent in Europe and 1.1 percent in Asia/Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. McDonald’s says positive results in China were offset by negative results in Japan.

Source

Poland

Well, it’s over. Mitt Romney has amassed a nearly-insurmountable delegate lead, and is on track to become his party’s nominee for president.

The road to victory hasn’t been easy for the former Massachusetts governor. The primary campaign stretched on for months, and at least 10 different candidates topped the national polls at some point.

So how much did victory cost?

Romney spent a total of $76.6 million, far more than any other campaign. That total is, for example, more than the combined spending of Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

Now, money isn’t everything in politics — but it sure doesn’t hurt. And in this field, Romney dominated.

"The Romney team was putting a lot of money out there," one Santorum adviser told CNN when the former Pennsylvania senator called it quits earlier this month. "The budget was a factor."

More money, more votes: The billion dollar campaign

At the end of March, the Romney camp had captured 607 delegates and 4.1 million votes. That means the candidate, who has cultivated a reputation as a penny-pincher, spent $18.50 per vote, and $126,000 per delegate.

The money was used to cover various expenses like hotels, food, equipment, accounting services, rental cars, air travel, event consultants and online advertisers.

For instance, in March, the campaign spent $871 on Poland Spring water, $1,966 on office supplies from Apple (, Fortune 500), more than $50 at Applebee’s, $48 at Arby’s, $9.57 at Panda Express, $11,000 in payments to the Waldorf Astoria hotel and $70,165 at law and lobbying firm Patton Boggs.

But at least two of Romney’s contenders had a better votes-to-expenditure ratio.

America’s Choice 2012

Gingrich, for example, spent $21 million through the end of March, collecting 141 delegates and 2.2 million votes. That works out to just under $10 per vote and around $150,000 per delegate.

Santorum spent $18.7 million on 264 delegates and 2.9 million votes for a per-vote expenditure just north of $6.50 and a cost-per-delegate of about $71,000.

Paul, meanwhile, got the worst return on his money of the final contenders. The Texas congressman spent nearly $35 million, but received only around 1.1 million votes and 72 delegates. The math works out to $32.40 per vote and roughly $485,500 per delegate.

And that’s just the official campaign spending. This cycle, the influence of super PACs should not be ignored. While technically prohibited from coordinating with campaigns, the new spending vehicles acted as a supplement, and in some cases, became campaign linchpins.

When super PAC money is factored in, overall spending on Romney’s behalf jumps to $122 million, bringing his cost-per-vote to just under $30. By this measure, each delegate cost more than $200,000.

Gingrich also saw a significant jump when super PAC money is included. Adding in the $18 million spent by the Winning our Future super PAC, the former House speaker’s cost-per-vote jumps to over $17.75, while spending per delegate tops $275,000.

The Santorum super PAC added around $8 million in spending. That pushed him to almost $9.50 per vote and $101,500 per delegate. Less reliant on super PAC spending, Paul’s figures were little changed.

Moving ahead, Romney faces the challenge of ramping up fundraising efforts, while investing a healthy percentage of that money in the kind of ground game that will be able to get out the vote in November.

One candidate has a jump on Romney in that category: President Obama. The Obama re-election campaign has brought in $191 million, and already spent just less than half — or $89 million — of that total. 

Source

Oil prices hovered near $103 a barrel Tuesday in Asia amid investor worries that Europe’s debt crisis will undermine economic growth and crude consumption.

Benchmark oil for June delivery was down 13 cents to $102.98 a barrel at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 77 cents to settle at $103.11 in New York on Monday.

Brent crude for June delivery was up 15 cents at $118.87 per barrel in London.

Traders are concerned fiscal austerity measures designed to lower European debt levels may trigger a recession this year. On Monday, a survey showed the eurozone’s manufacturing and services sectors unexpectedly fell in April.

“Developments in the euro area continue to drive sentiment,” said Gerald Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered. “The biggest threat facing the world economy is a collapse of one or more euro area economies.”

Crude has traded between $100 and $110 for most of this year as the U.S. economy improved more than expected but crude demand remained weak business card.

Some analysts are optimistic that crude demand in the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest oil consumers, is about to rebound. Economic sanctions by Western powers against Iran may also cut crude output from the OPEC member, tightening global supplies.

“We’re looking at the bottom in U.S. gasoline demand, the bottom of the China slowdown and we are just starting to feel the pinch on Iranian sanctions,” said Carl Larry at Oil Outlooks and Opinions. “Outside of another economic meltdown, there’s not much that we can see that is going to bring this oil price back down.”

In other energy trading, heating oil was down 0.4 cents at $3.14 per gallon and gasoline futures fell 0.4 cents at $3.14 per gallon. Natural gas rose 1.2 cents at $2.02 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Source

SXC Health Solutions Corp. agreed to buy Catalyst Health Solutions Inc. in a cash and stock transaction valued at $4.4 billion to stay competitive as larger pharmacy benefit managers join forces.

Catalyst investors will receive $28 in cash and 0.6606 shares of SXC stock for each Catalyst share under the terms of the agreement, the companies said. That implies a purchase price of $81.02 per Catalyst share, 28 percent above Tuesday’s closing prices.

Pharmacy benefit managers are combining after Express Scripts Inc., the largest in the U.S., agreed to pay $29.1 billion for Medco Health Solutions Inc. SXC, one of the biggest providers of technology for processing prescription claims, was the target of speculation last month.

The company is now in position to be one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit companies, said Brian Tanquilut, an analyst with Jefferies & Co. in Nashville, Tenn.

“SXC will be the next big player in the PBM space,” Tanquilut said. “The opportunity to win new business from the larger guys, meaning Express-Medco, CVS, is there.”

SXC Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Thierer will continue in those roles in the combined company. “We will be the second-largest independent PBM in the country, in terms of prescription volume,” Thierer said. “The transaction will expand our reach to larger clients.”

The companies have little overlap among clients, with Catalyst having many state employers while SXC has state Medicaid clients, Thierer said.

“This catapults SXC and Catalyst into a much better negotiating stance,” said Anthony Vendetti, a Maxim Group LLC analyst in New York who follows both companies. “It gives them more leverage with drug manufacturers and drug distributors and because of their increased size, it gives them more leverage with clients.”

Founded as Systems Xcellence in 1993, SXC negotiates with drugmakers for lower prescription medicine prices on behalf of health insurers, Medicare and Medicaid plans, workers’ compensation programs and long-term care facilities.

SXC also makes software that processed one out of every five drug claims in the U.S., according to the company’s 2010 annual report.

Tanquilut said the company may take a year to complete the integration, then move on to more deals to keep growing and compete with Express Scripts and CVS. The company needs to add smaller assets in specialty pharmaceuticals, most of which are likely to be closely held regional companies, he said.

Source

Never have I been less qualified to address a subject than the one you’ll read about today — fashion.

Let the record show I’m wearing jeans as I write this. It’s Wednesday. Not that it matters now that casual Friday has morphed into casual every day.

I once looped a tie around my neck every morning. It usually didn’t match my threadbare oxford shirt and always carried evidence of meals that didn’t quite make it from the plate-to-my-mouth. But it was, at least, a feeble nod toward professional attire.

I couldn’t tell you the last time I wore a tie to work or, for that matter, last purchased neck wear. Nor, apparently, can a lot of other people.

“There is no one way to dress for business anymore, where there used to be a set formula,” said Nancy Nix-Rice, a St. Louis image and wardrobe consultant.

Anyone who has paid a visit recently to an office occupied by small business or start-up can certainly attest to that.

Jeans, polo shirts and sweaters are standard attire in the boutique marketing firms, information technology and other companies with no designs of ever nailing down a spot on the Fortune 500.

In the small-business world, shorts are de rigueur summer wear for both men and women, and a tie is what happens when a soccer game ends with neither team scoring.

“There’s no doubt some people have taken business casual way too far,” said Nix-Rice. “And that sends a message that either says, ‘I’m an intellectual, and can’t be bothered by something so mundane as to how I look.’ Or, it’s a (finger gesture) approach that tells your employer, ‘You can’t tell me what to do even if you own the company.’”

Many trace the dressing down trend to young tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. But many medium-to-large corporations and law firms continue to buck the trend, unwilling to allow employees to dress as they see fit.

With the exception of casual Fridays in the summer months and occasional informal office celebrations, Edward Jones employees are expected to meet certain standards whenever they stroll into corporate headquarters.

For men, the rules call for a shirt, tie, suit or sport coat. For female employees, it means business attire.

Human resources executive Beth Cook said the Edward Jones dress policy rests on “the fundamental belief that being a professional is dressing like one.”

Monsanto, a little more lax, encourages its employees to arrive at the office in business casual.

The biotechnology giant’s dress code, in part to protect lab workers, bans open-toed shoes along with “shorts, skirts, tank tops and other garments that expose large areas of skin…”

The definition of professionally appropriate fashion started to evolve long before the first office worker through caution to the wind and wore shirt sleeves on a stifling August afternoon.

A reader responding to an informal survey on dress codes I posted to LinkedIn recalled the day when corporations required male employees to cover their heads.

“The hat you chose spoke to your status and position in the company as well as your attitude of professionalism,” the reader wrote remembering the co-worker who, in flaunting convention, was “henceforth known as ‘the man without a hat.’ A label he wore with pride.’”

Today, as often as not, the label will read Levi Strauss.

Nix-Rice has no squabble with jeans in the workplace. But she counsels it’s best to offset (preferably unfaded) denim with shirts and upper body wear that conveys a more, well, buttoned-down approach.

“Appearance is language,” she advises clients. “It’s what you are saying all day, even to yourself.”

In many ways, the folks at Edward Jones and other offices with strict dress codes have an easier time than those left to our own sartorial devices.

“Business dress today is confusing,” Nix-Rice acknowledged. “On one hand, you don’t want to look like the dork who didn’t get the business casual memo. But on the other hand, you don’t want to be the slob who doesn’t tuck in his polo shirt.”

Looking ahead, it’s not difficult to envision tomorrow’s corporate cubicle and office dwellers viewing mandatory business attire through the same prism with which we regard the rules that once placed a hat on the head of our grandparents.

Don’t think it will happen? Consider this: Time MoneyLand last month reported the results of a survey in which 93 percent of millennials (20- and 30-year-olds) said they gravitate toward workplaces that allow them to dress “in a way that makes them comfortable.”

Jeans, evidently, symbolize the truest measure of comfort, with 79 percent of the respondents saying they should be allowed to wear denim to work at least some of the time.

Finally, a note to anyone tempted to invest their life’s savings in necktie futures. MTV has attached another moniker to an age group already tagged as millenials and Gen Y.

It’s the “No Collar Workforce.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“It must always be noted that these numbers are statistics—and complicated ones, based on tens of thousands of surveys from businesses and households, which are then massaged by a variety of quantitative techniques to produce the unemployment rate, the size of the labor force, and a host of other numbers. They are not absolutes, and they are not unequivocal facts. The definition of “unemployment” is not simply out of work; you can be without a job for years and not “unemployed” as a statistic; once you cease actively looking for work, you cease to be part of the workforce and hence are not “unemployed.” “Employed” also says nothing about wages. You can have two jobs and still earn less than the official poverty rate or be unable to support a family of five, and that indeed is the case for tens of millions of people.” - Primer by economist and money manager Zachary Karabell on how to interpret the federal government’s monthly report on unemployment.

Source: The Daily Beast

BY THE NUMBERS

$42,569 - The median salary for 2012 college graduates holding a bachelor’s degree at minimum — a 4.5 percent increase over the median salary earned by the Class of 2011.

Source: National Association of Colleges and Employers

FINAL WORD

“At G.M. you did the same thing every 48 seconds. In the nursing job, you don’t know what’s going to walk in the door.” — former autoworker Ken Harris on a new career path he took as a result of the type of retraining program now endangered by federal budget cuts.

Source: The New York Times  

Source

The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage dropped near its all-time low this week, making home-buying and refinancing a bargain for those who can qualify.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan fell to 3.88 percent from 3.98 percent. That’s just above the rate of 3.87 percent reached in February, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s.

The 15-year mortgage, a popular option for refinancing, plunged to a fresh low of 3.11 percent from 3.21 percent last week. The previous record of 3.13 percent was hit last month.

Mortgage rates are lower because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. Last week’s disappointing report on March job growth led more investors to sell stocks and buy Treasurys, which are considered safer investments. As demand for Treasurys increases, the yield falls.

Employers added just 120,000 jobs last month _ half the monthly pace from the previous three months. Many economists downplayed the weak March figures, noting that a warmer winter may have led to some earlier hiring in previous months.

The mild winter has helped lift expectations for the housing market after four years of sluggish sales.

January and February made up the best winter for re-sales in five years, when the housing crisis began. And builders in February requested the most permits to construct homes in more than three years.

Cheap mortgage rates are also brightening the outlook. They have been below 4 percent for all but one week since early December faxless pay day loans.

Applications for new mortgages have fallen over the past month, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, But there has been a sharp rise in the average loan size, suggesting a bigger appetite for home loans. The average size of mortgage applications has increased by $20,000 since December, to about $235,000 last month.

Home prices continue to fall. Prices tend to lag sales and millions of foreclosures and short sales _ when a lender accepts less than what is owed on a mortgage _ remain on the market. And the housing crisis and recession have also persuaded many Americans to rent instead of buy, which has led to a drop in homeownership.

To calculate the average rates, Freddie Mac surveys lenders across the country on just Monday through Wednesday of each week.

The average rates don’t include extra fees, known as points, which most borrowers must pay to get the lowest rates. One point equals 1 percent of the loan amount.

The average fees for the 30-year and 15-year fixed loans were unchanged at 0.7.

For the five-year adjustable loan, the average rate fell to 2.85 percent from 2.86 percent, and the average fee fell to 0.7 from 0.8.

The average on the one-year adjustable loan rose to 2.80 percent from 2.78 percent, and the average fee was unchanged at 0.6.

Source

The U.S. job market took a breather in March after its best hiring stretch since the Great Recession.

Employers added 120,000 jobs last month _ half the December-February pace and well short of the 210,000 economists were expecting. The unemployment rate fell from 8.3 percent in February to 8.2 percent, the lowest since January 2009, but that was largely because many Americans stopped looking for work.

Still, few economists expect hiring to fizzle in spring and summer, as it did the past two years. And they blamed seasonal factors for much of Friday’s disappointing report from the Labor Department.

“We don’t think this is the start of another spring dip in labor market conditions,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist with Capital Economics.

The report was also closely watched in political circles. If employers retreat on hiring, consumers could lose confidence in the economy and potentially dim President Barack Obama’s re-election hopes.

Ashworth and other economists cited the weather for the latest jobs report. A warm January and February allowed companies to hire workers for outdoor jobs a few weeks earlier than usual, effectively stealing jobs from March. It partially explains a 34,000-job drop in retail hiring and a 7,000 drop in construction jobs.

“Our winter didn’t really exist,” said Alan Amdahl, who runs his own construction company in Sioux Falls, S.D. “It’s just incredible. People didn’t hibernate.”

Economists also say the numbers can bounce around from month to month. Consistently creating 200,000 jobs a month is tough. The economy hasn’t put together four straight months of 200,000 or more new jobs since early 2000.

Economists are still encouraged by the recent hiring trend: The economy has generated an average 212,000 jobs a month from January through March.

Anthony Chan, chief economist at JP Morgan Wealth Management, noted strong growth among businesses that are especially sensitive to the economy’s health. Hotels and restaurants hired 39,000 workers. Manufacturers added 37,000.

The factory hiring is especially welcome. Expanding factories create more jobs at the mines that produce raw materials, in warehouses and at trucking companies and at utilities that generate power.

Government jobs, which declined by an average 22,000 a month last year, fell just 1,000 in March. An improving economy is generating tax revenue and easing budget problems at city halls and statehouses across the country.

The March slowdown brings back painful memories of what happened in mid-2010 and 2011, when the economy lost momentum and job growth sputtered.

The job market had been on a recent roll. From December through February, the country added 734,000 jobs. The only three-month stretch that was better since the recession ended was March through May 2010, when the government was hiring tens of thousands of temporary workers for the census.

Companies across the country are hiring:

_ Nimble Storage, a young information technology company in San Jose, Calif., is rapidly adding staff to keep up with demand for its data storage devices. Anup Singh, the company’s chief financial officer, says the explosive growth of data and the need for companies to store, analyze and deliver it is driving rapid expansion. Nimble Storage has added 30 employees so far this year, bringing its workforce to 175 cash advance america. It expects to hire 70 more by the end of the year. They are hiring engineers, sales people and customer support staff.

_ Landry & Kling Cruise Event Services in Miami, which arranges events on cruise ships, has added two workers this year and plans to hire two more. Sales are strong.

“It’s like the floodgates are opening,” says CEO and co-founder Joyce Kling. “There’s an energy to our day now. We see a lot of leads floating through.”

_ IdeaPaint, a company that makes washable paint that people can use erasable markers on, has hired seven workers in the last three months. Sales have risen sharply and are expected to keep rising. So the Ashland, Mass.-based company has more plans to hire _ it has 31 employees now and expects to have 40 at the end of the year.

“We just had a board meeting yesterday and agreed to become more aggressive with our hiring, with our advertising, with our investment spending. We’re very confident,” CEO Bob Munroe said.

The unemployment rate has dropped from 9.1 percent last August to 8.2 percent last month, the lowest since Obama’s first month in the White House.

Each month, the government does one survey to learn how many jobs were created and another survey to determine the unemployment rate. Those surveys can produce results that sometimes seem to conflict.

One is called the payroll survey. It asks mostly large companies and government agencies how many people they employed during the month. This survey produces the number of jobs gained or lost.

The other is the household survey. Government workers ask whether the adults in a household have a job. Those who don’t are asked whether they’re looking for one. If they are, they’re considered unemployed. If they aren’t, they’re not considered in the work force and aren’t counted as unemployed. The household survey produces each month’s unemployment rate.

Unlike the payroll survey, the household survey captures farm workers, the self-employed and people who work for new companies. It also provides a better snapshot of hiring by small businesses.

In March, the household survey showed that the number of people who say they have a job fell by 31,000 and that a significantly larger number of people _ 79,000 _ stopped looking for a job. That is why the unemployment rate dipped.

Some economists, most notably Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, say the job market faces bigger problems than unseasonably warm weather and month-to-month volatility in the employment numbers. They say the economy isn’t growing fast enough to sustain strong job growth and to push the unemployment rate down rapidly.

The economy is expected to grow 2 percent to 2.5 percent this year. Chris Jones, of TD Economics, says that is not fast enough for sustain the monthly average of 245,000 jobs created from December through February. He expects the economy to average 200,000 new jobs a month in the April-June quarter and then to pick up speed.

“The last few months of aggressive employment growth were inconsistent with underlying economic fundamentals,” Jones said. “March’s number, while still weak, actually makes sense.”

Source