On the surface, the March jobs reported was better than expected... except for manufacturing workers. As shown in the chart below, in the past month, a disturbing 29,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. This was the single biggest monthly drop in the series going back to December 2009.

But not all is lost: as has been the case for virtually every month during the "recovery", virtually every laid off manufacturing worker could find a job as a waiter: in March, the workers in the "Food services and drinking places" category, aka waiters, bartenders and minimum wage line cooks, rose again to a new record high of 11,307,000 workers, an increase of 25K in the month, offsetting virtually all lost manufacturing jobs.

This is how the two job series have looked since the start of 2015: 24k manufacturing jobs have been lost in the past 14 months compared to an increas of 365K food service workers.

And here is the longer-term, going back to the start of the crisis in December 2007: please do not "peddle fiction" upon seeing this chart.