The PMI has in fact exhibited a correlation of some 89 % with private
sector employment excluding agriculture since the survey data were first available in 1998, outperforming the INSEE and Banque de France surveys.
Admittedly, 3,000 jobs is peanuts in the U.S. labour market, but, as the chart below shows, the federal layoffs mean that Washington is starting to be a drag on
employment growth just as state and local governments are beginning to recover (blue is the federal government; green is state government; red means local government; and private
sector employment,
excluding farm employees, is orange).