news
Facebook Twitter
News, Opinion & Analysis

Nerds Unite: The Tweets of Jobs Friday

The Labor Department reported that the economy added a surprising 321,000 payrolls in November.

A now hiring sign is posted in the window of an O' Reilly auto parts store on Nov. 7, 2014 in San Rafael, Calif.

Good news for the economy means positivity on Twitter.

By + More

The Twitterverse blows up in anticipation of and in reaction to the Labor Department's employment report the first Friday of each month, and this morning the circus didn't fail to disappoint after another stellar report. The U.S. economy added a better-than-expected 321,000 jobs in November, well above the median consensus estimate of 230,000. The unemployment and labor force participation rate remained flat at 5.8 percent and 62.8 percent, respectively.

A "blowout," "impressive," "welcome news" and "a knockout" were some of the ways economists described the figures. Responses on the microblog site tell a similar story about how the economy's been advancing in 2014, the strongest year for job gains since 1999.

The timelines of economy-watchers flood with nonfarm payroll guesses under the hashtag #NFPguesses, countdowns until the report's 8:30 release, what-to-expect analyses and more. The uncertainty of the monthly report seems to add to the drama of anticipating it.

Then there was the questionably timed – and now-deleted – tweet from Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal.


141205news_jw

This morning's flood of excited reactions showed just how surprising yet welcomed the figures were.