Bureau of Labor Statistics released the february jobs number and 236K jobs were created, much better than the 170K expected. The unemployment number also dropped to 7.7% and Bonds are taking it on the chin down 50bps. Looking inside the numbers we see that the drop in rate is due to the significant drop in the participation rate. The chart above shows that while there are 300K less unemployed virtually all of that is because 296K people left the work force. We will leave it to you as to why people are leaving the work force but the ranks of those on disability and food stamps has exploded higher.
