How bad are the numbers?

Say this about the March employment report: There's not much debate about how bad the numbers are. They're baaaaaad. How do you even try sugarcoating an 80,000-job decline in payrolls and a 5.1 percent unemployment rate (up from 4.8 percent in February)? Here's a sample of opinion, courtesy of the WSJ Economic Blog and the FT:

--Clear and unmistakable recession signals from the labor market. This magnitude of a rise in the unemployment rate has never occurred in the post-war period without the economy being in recession. – Bear Stearns

--Consumer spending outlook is grim, with wage and salary income growth fading fast and other headwinds as strong as ever… Until government checks start flowing sometime in May, the consumer is going to be a major handicap for the economy. Moreover, those rebate checks are only going to provide a temporary respite from the rough process of correcting years of excess in the credit markets and the housing market. This economic slump is going to be a long, grinding one, and a “v-shaped” recovery appears quite unlikely. – Joshua Shapiro, MFR Inc.

--Despite continued protestations from some, the U.S. economy is in recession. GDP likely grew slightly in the first quarter, but employment, production and other more relevant data show declines. Industry data such as the ISM reports suggest that the broader retrenchment is mild by historical standards, and fortunately asynchronous. Exports (agriculture in particular) are booming, while domestic industries retrench. – Steven Wieting, Citigroup

--Declines of this order of magnitude are consistent with our view of a shallow recession in the first half of 2008, with the economy overall projected to decline by just under a half a percentage point, on average, in the first two quarters of 2008. –Brian Bethune, Global Insight

--Conditions are already bad in the labor market but if history proves to be a reliable guide, they are going to a lot worse over the next few months. - Paul Ashworth, Capital Economics

By far the most entertaining comment came from Edward Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, who told Bloomberg this morning that "I don't focus too much on the monthly unemployment rate because it has been a bit volatile." Oops - last month Lazear said, "What we do tend to place more weight on is the unemployment rate because the unemployment rate is not volatile." They'll get their story straight one of these days.