This week was a big week for jobs and unemployment news. We saw the release of the April ADP Payroll report in advance of the Monthly Employment Situation Report for April from the government. We also received information this week regarding weekly unemployment claims. Jobs are up "big league," and unemployment claims are at significantly low levels for continuing claims, first-time claims, as recorded in the weekly unemployment claims report, and for the official unemployment levels recorded by the Current Population Survey data used in the Monthly Employment Situation Report.

(May 1) This column "always" produces a jobs report forecast article prior to the monthly Employment Situation Report. One reason for this forecast column is to manage expectations. Another reason is to keep honest the people who are writing the column and for those reporting on the report. The article  "Big League April Jobs Report Potential" detailed how it was possible for the economy to add another one million non-seasonally adjusted jobs, how it could see a significant drop in the unemployment levels, most likely under 7 million for the first time in nearly a decade, and how the official "worker" number could grow by 200,000 to 300,000 seasonally adjusted workers.

(May 1) The first day of the month means a look back at the ten most read articles written on this website.The most read article of the month was the "Top Ten Articles of March" article. There were a number of articles regarding the jobs report that made the top ten including  the "Sector Report," the "Multiple Job Worker" report and  two articles regarding the ADP Jobs report.

(May 2) They still produce weekly unemployment claims reports. Who knew?What used to be the lead story at the bottom of the hour on Unemployment Claims Thursday is now relegated to the crawler at the bottom of the screen. The consecutive weeks of under 300,000 seasonally adjusted first-time claims continues and continues to be ignored. It took a few days. This column wrote an article on "Last Week's Unemployment Claims Remain(ing) Low" this week.

(May 3) This column has been skeptical of the importance of the ADP monthly report due to the situation where all of the data released is seasonally adjusted.  The data can prepare us for what we will find in the monthly Jobs Report that follows from the government. The April ADP Report Showed that Jobs Growth Continued.

(May 4) Thursday was the release of the unemployment claims report and the unemployment claims article. This column wrote an article focusing on the continuing claims number and discussed the first-time unemployment claims number, both of which were at record lows for this week in April - the final claims report for April first-time claims and the second to last report for continuing claims during the month of April. The April Continuing Claims Data was Amazing.

(May 5) This was Jobs Week.Friday's April Jobs Report Exceeded Expectations. We saw a near record level of combined non-seasonally adjusted full-time and part-time jobs created. Nearly 1 million jobs were created, again. We have the most jobs now than we have ever had. Unemployment dropped under 7 million to 6.555 million workers - a level lower than April 2006 and comparable to April 2007. Remember we had peak pre-recession employment during July 2007. The non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped to 4.10%. The only thing that was weak, non-seasonally adjusted, was the growth in the Current Employment Statistics worker number. It was reported as 211,000 "jobs," which was within the level of expectations. The seasonal factor was a little higher than projected. What was missing from most discussion was the significant drop in people working multiple jobs. Maybe some of the people who were working two part-time jobs during March found one full-time job during April.

Next week, the week following the Jobs Report release, is normally a slow data week. This down-time allows this column to analyze the Jobs report data at a deeper level than most sources.  It will dig into the multiple job worker data. It will dig into the sector data. It will dig into the data as it pertains to men versus women. It will dig into the jobs data by age group.

It's the economy.