However, a much larger drag seemed possible after the October surge, and a good portion of the rise will be offset by a gain in inventories in the quarter.

If demand stays strong and productivity growth slows considerably, this could be a year that could be seen as heading towards traditional overheating of the labor market, with big employment gains,

In some industries, there's no improvement and the economy is not going to help them.

If you look at labor demand, you should be getting a decent trend. It was only June data that fell below that trend.

If you can tell me where the next move in oil prices is going to be -- up to $60 a barrel or down to $20 -- I can tell you what the economy is going to do.

The Fed has assumed that the weakness in the first quarter was temporary. This confirms that. The reasonable view was you don't have a one-third rise in energy prices without consequences.

The Labor Department gave guidance that workers held on payrolls would be counted as employed, even if they couldn't be on the job. Just assuming that everyone in New Orleans was out of a job was not the way to go.

It takes a lot of confidence to buy cars and homes; people don't make that kind of decision on a whim.

It's very unlikely for Fed to worry about month to month data changes, or even two months, as the markets do.

That kind of decline is a perfect fit with what we've seen in the household survey's measure of employment, ... if not in February, then in future benchmark revisions.