This time, the data presents a contradiction: both the number of new jobs and the unemployment rate are low. The unemployment rate of 4.2% is lower than the general expectation and also lower than the consensus of 4.3% among the five major Wall Street investment banks. The 57,000 new jobs ended the previous three months' trend of maintaining more than 100,000 jobs, and is closer to Citi's estimate of 25,000, but lower than the range of 90,000 to 130,000 predicted by mainstream Wall Street investment banks.
