Last week’s Labor Department report that the economy added 162,000 jobs last month has prompted a certain amount of political happy dancing, justified or not. Even accounting for the 42,000 temporary workers hired by the Census Bureau and the labor market action that can be considered as delayed from February, the news is still some of the most encouraging we’ve seen in years. Even taking into account the fact that the unemployment rate was unchanged in March and continues to hover at 9.7%, positive movement on the jobs front is even more encouraging than the 5.6% economic growth we saw during the fourth quarter of 2009. Preliminary reports suggest that growth may be found to have slowed during the first quarter of this year. Overall, economic activity increased in most regions of the country and consumer demand continues to improve but all those improvements have been modest and would be consistent with growth of 2% or so.

Taking a slightly longer view, The Conference Board reported last month that all three of their composite indexes (Leading, Coincident and Lagging) have increased over the last six months. This behavior suggests the growth that began in the third quarter of last year should continue in the short term. No one appears to have ruled out the possibility of a double-dip recession but the numbers look promising. As for life in the small business universe, last month’s SBET release from the NFIB found that small business owners were notably less optimistic, while their specific plans with respect to things like capital spending and hiring had remained largely unchanged. We’ll be revisiting these numbers within the next couple of weeks, when many of the organizations that track the economy are due to release updated economic readings.