March jobs number tomorrow but is anyone watching?

I posit the question above because as March is sure to follow February, tomorrow’s jobs number is sure to show an increase of jobs again and could be close to 200,000 for the second month in a  row.  However, I am reading and hearing less and less leading up to this announcement as the markets are occupied with “freedom fighting” in North Africa and the Middle East, earthquakes, tsunamis and possible nuclear meltdowns.  This says nothing of the problems in Europe that have not gone away, just on holiday as they say across the pond.  Portugal’s debt was downgraded this week, Spain’s prime minister resigned over a spat with their congress about austerity cuts and the budget.  The world and the financial markets have had a lifetime of black swan events lately and are looking less and less at tomorrow’s number because they expect it to be good, if not then the market which is ripe for a correction may just get one.  My research tells me the governments’ number should be good as the weekly jobless numbers have been dropping for weeks.  This week’s Challenger, Gray and Christmas layoffs number dropped and the CEO roundtable report indicates that companies are poised to hire more employees over the next 6-9 months.  You add to that the good manufacturing and non-manufacturing (service) numbers, low inflation and record corporate profits and you have an economy that is expanding, not rapidly but expanding.  As I have written and said publically for months now, corporations will get to a point where they can’t work their employees any harder even if they pay them more so they have to hire more people to grow their businesses.  Their shareholders may not want them to do this as stocks prices have gone skyward for over a year now as corporate managers have learned to do more with less with the help of technology.  The one odd thing that may happen tomorrow is that the unemployment rate will probably tick up to 9% or higher, why you might ask is this happening as jobs are being created.  The reason is that many people have simply stopped looking for a job so they don’t show up on the jobless survey which makes up the non-farm payrolls report. If they start looking for a job again because they hear things are picking up in the economy, voila, higher unemployment rate as jobs are created.  With every non-farm payroll report, the internals matter, the government will shed jobs as the private sector should show nice increases.