ADP, for what it’s worth, came in at +10,000 on Wednesday.

The consensus estimate of economists, per this Bloomberg link, written almost as if after-the-fact, is -75,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rising to 5.2%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report is here, and opens as follows:

Nonfarm payroll employment was little changed in April (-20,000), following job losses that totaled 240,000 in the first 3 months of the year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. The unemployment rate, at 5.0 percent, also was little changed in April. Employment continued to decline in construction, manufacturing, and retail trade, while jobs were added in health care and in professional and technical services.

OK, the headline-making stuff beat expectations by quite a bit, with the unemployment rate going down.

Aside: Seriously, Old Media (and I’m talking to YOU, AP reporters Martin Crutsinger, Jeannine ["It’s no longer a question of recession or not. Now it’s how deep and how long"] Aversa, Ann D’Innocenzio, et al [links are to BizzyBlog searches on their names]), how can an economy with 5.0% unemployment (and falling) and decidedly non-stellar but positive growth, be in recession?

More to follow. …..

(slightly corrected from earlier this morning) The prior-month revisions were pretty small: March’s -80,000 was revised -1,000 to -81,000. February’s -76,000 was revised -7,000 to -83,000. The overall seasonally adjusted job loss was -28,000 (-20 – 1 – 7).

Some notable unemployment-rate changes (based on looking at data in the detailed tables):

• African-Americans – down 0.4% from 9.0% to 8.6%, seasonally adjusted. The raw number (i.e., not seasonally adjusted) is 8.2%, down from 9.0%.
• All Teenagers – down 0.4% to 15.4%, seasonally adjusted (down 2.6% in 3 months). Not seasonally adjusted, it went down 0.5% to 15.0% (down 3.2% in the three months).
• African-American teenagers – down 6.8% to 24.5%, seasonally adjusted (11.2% in 3 months). Not seasonally adjusted, it went down 8.0% to 23.3%. Those figures are near historic lows.

It seems reasonable to believe that these three sets of stats indicate some substitution of less-skilled labor for illegal immigrants who were supposedly “doing jobs citizens won’t do,” but may be finding it tougher to find under-the-table work (or “legal” work that requires stealing someone’s identity or Social Security number-sharing for an illegal to obtain).

A look at the big-picture “raw numbers” — Since I went down this road last month (and ripped into related business coverage), I’d better keep on traveling it.

Remember that all the verbiage you’ll see today about this or that industry “losing jobs” refers to the seasonally adjusted numbers reported by the BLS. Here is what actually happened on the not-seasonally-adjusted ground:

BLS’s best estimate is that 703,000 more real people were actually working at real jobs in April than were in March, and that 1,810,000 more were really doing so in April than in January.

While not as high as 2006 or 2007, and not as high as one would like to see, April’s increase is much closer to the previous two Aprils (within 157,000, on average) than January’s decrease or February’s and March’s increases were to their comparable 2006 and 2007 figures (all three averages were well over 250,000 than 2008). Much more improvement is needed, but some improvement did occur during April.

Here are just a few of a the real-world job-change numbers for April:
- Construction — up 114,000.
- Manufacturing — down 29,000.
- Trade, transportation, and utilities — up 34,000.
- Retail — up 7,400.
- Financial activities — up 12,000.
- Professional and business services — up 203,000.
- Government — down 3,000.

That government number, and the ones for the preceding months, make me question something from earlier this week about ballooning government employment that I’m going to have to find. Update: There has been a revision (today’s) since the USA Today article about government hiring, but as far as I can tell, they got it right (i.e., they used the NOT seasonally adjusted numbers). Update 2: They got the government part right, but the private sector part wrong, using the seasonally adjusted numbers to tell us of 286,000 private-sector jobs lost when there actually a lot more lost (due to January post-Christmas adjustments that occur every year.

This updates the “Supply-Side Stunner” post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) from Tuesday. The business press has not yet noticed this news.

The last Daily Treasury Statement for April published yesterday shows just how impressive what is probably the supply-side tax cuts’ last hurrah really was:

(Prior-year links: April 30, 2007 Daily Treasury Statement; April 2007 Monthly Treasury Statement.)

A couple of days ago I predicted correctly that withholdings would come in a few points ahead of last year and that corporate income tax payments would be flat year-to-year.

But I was wrong about those not-withheld payments of income and employment taxes (What is listed above as “not withheld” also includes a later and relatively small line item in the Daily Treasury Statement called “individual income taxes.”). I thought they would come in at least 7% higher, and that 15% was “not out of the question.” Well, they came in 16.1% higher.

The significance of this shouldn’t be overlooked. As I noted on Tuesday (bold is mine):

…. this not-withheld category consists mostly of final payments that accompany individual 1040s for 2007, plus first-quarter 2008 estimated payments. The increase may not only reflect that entrepreneurs and the self-employed had pretty decent years in 2007, but that many of them are thinking, in the face of relentless media harping to the contrary, that 2008 will be at least as profitable. Estimated payments are supposed to be 25% of last year’s total tax bill, unless the taxpayer figures that the current year’s tax bill will be lower, in which case they can pay in less. I would think that anyone who could defensibly pay in less, would pay in less.

The fact that April’s not-withhelds were so strong makes a case for believing that the folks on the ground running sole proprietorships and S-Corps (corporations whose profits are passed through to shareholders, who then pay individual income tax on their share of reported profits) believe that the economy isn’t too bad after all.

The not-withheld numbers also show that the incentive effects of President Bush’s 2003 marginal-rate and investment-related tax cuts, contrary to my expectations and those of many others, have survived, at least into early 2008.

Old Media business writers are totally oblivious, as this Google News search for the 30 days ending May 1 on “treasury April receipts” (not in quotes) shows.

David Lawder of Reuters wrote this on Wednesday (bold is mine):

The U.S. Treasury said on Wednesday it will resume issuing 52-week bills after a seven-year break, as budget deficits swell due to slowing revenues and higher spending in a sluggish economy.

At least Lawder mentioned spending. Here’s John Brinsley of Bloomberg (bold is mine):

The U.S. Treasury said it plans to sell one-year bills for the first time in seven years as a weakening economy hurts tax receipts and forces the country deeper into debt.

As you can see, neither writer names the $117 in fiscal stimulus payments being sent in the coming weeks as major influence on the need to borrow.

They’re right, in the sense that April’s revenue gusher probably won’t last. If it doesn’t, it won’t be the “sluggish” or “weakening” economy that causes it. The culprit will be the ominously looming federal tax increases. At some point, and it’s not too far off, the prospect that the most of the 2001 and 2003 tax changes will be undone — something that will automatically begin happening in 2009 (to capital gains and dividends) and 2010-2011 (to almost everything else) unless Congress acts to keep the current tax system in place — will begin to have a dampening effect on investment and growth, which I would otherwise expect to recover nicely in the latter part of this year.

While on the subject: The government is treating the fiscal stimulus payments as negative receipts. This will, in my opinion, skew the numbers Treasury reports in the coming months by artificially reducing reported receipts. Since these payments are not directly-tied refunds of taxes paid (many are getting “rebates” when they paid in no tax, while others who paid lots of tax are getting nothing), I believe the amounts involved should be treated as “spending.” This is why I have segregated the $2.07 billion in checks sent out on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week in the chart above.

There is no doubt that April 2008’s receipts, on a direct-comparison basis (i.e., ignoring the stimulus payments) set an all-time record; the only question is by how much. That question will be answered when the Treasury Department releases the May Monthly Treasury Statement on May 12.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Perinton, New York:

APRIL 26, 2008

Thanks to his wife, Marcia, Bob Davis of Perinton has a good part of his life restored.

In January, Marcia, 54, donated one of her kidneys to Bob, 53.

It’s working well; he’s off dialysis, even returned to work at Eastman Kodak Co.

Marcia, too, has come back from the surgery at the University of Rochester Medical Center. She’s been working again at Hillside Children’s Center for a month. Things look good.

Now that the operation is behind them, they’re citing their own experience to counter a misconception about live-donor kidney transplants.

Marcia notes that when she tells someone that she donated a kidney to her husband, that person usually responds, “Oh my gosh, it’s a miracle that you were a perfect match.”

In her case, and many other cases, perfection wasn’t needed.

“You don’t have to be a perfect match to donate,” Marcia says. “I’d like more people to know how far they’ve come in organ-donation techniques.”

For sure, she and Bob had compatible blood types, a necessity for the transplantation.

However, the antigens used as indicators to predict a transplant’s success didn’t match. But improved anti-rejection drugs still made the transplant possible.

Consequently, because Marcia was willing to donate, Bob didn’t have to wait — perhaps five years or longer — for a matching cadaver kidney.

At the least, the transplant improved his life; at the most, it saved his life.

Bob and Marcia, each of whom had been married and divorced, met through a dating service in 1992 and were married three years ago.

Bob was a runner, a person so energetic that his nickname was “Mad Dog.”

But in 2005 he was diagnosed with kidney disease.

“When he got sick, it just took so much out of him,” Marcia says.

In January 2007, Bob went on dialysis. He did the procedure at home at night, using a process called peritoneal dialysis.

The method allows greater freedom than hemodialysis at a dialysis clinic, but it is still time-consuming.

“It can take over your whole life,” Marcia says. “Once he got on dialysis, I made up my mind to give the transplant a try.”

Live donation is possible because the donor has two kidneys but can function normally with one. Nonetheless, the procedure is major surgery and carries with it the possibility of infection or other complications.

Marcia underwent a battery of tests before she got the go-ahead

“I was nervous; I was scared,” she says, recalling her feelings on the day of the transplant. “But I just knew it was the right thing to do.” …..

Go here for the rest of the story.